You
are composed of three parts; body, breath and mind. The first two
merely belong to you in the sense that you are responsible for their
care; the last alone is truly yours. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
She
has a precise, orderly mind. Well tuned to detail. She has her
priorities set right. Knows what is of high value. Sets her intent on
accomplishing, completing what she begins. A point of pride;
discipline, sequence, co-ordination, orderly habit, concise, meticulous,
appropriate, meaningful. We must know what it is we set about doing,
convince ourselves it is worth doing well, and throw ourselves into the
effort. Therein lies pride in accomplishment.
She was convinced
she had been born with the pre-ordained instinct of an orderly mind.
Deep within her genetic code lay that insistent urge. Her DNA was
imprinted with an urge to tidiness. Not that this was her only genetic
inheritance of note. She had, she thought, modestly, more than her
share of intelligence. And was not the least bit averse to
demonstrating it, when called for.
Even as a child she recognized
the difference, the vast difference between disorderliness and order.
In one lay confusion, the other satisfaction. Her mother’s household,
she quickly realized, was of the former variety. Her mother’s slovenly
slap-dash approach to housekeeping had offended her even-then impeccable
sense of order, when she was so very young. It was a cause of personal
shame to her. That entry into her mother’s domain was to be confronted
with the mess of a life overwhelmed by detail. The detail of everyday
life that some people seem functionally incapable of settling into with
the needed measure of complacent order. She little realized at that
time, that her mother had surrendered to an exhaustion of the spirit.
Then,
she had been convinced that those, like her mother, who readily threw
up their hands at any attempt to make order of chaos made the choice -
through the sad failure of faint heart - of living with detritus,
cobwebs, objects strewn everywhere; a tableau of dysfunction. Stumbling
through the course of their days, bewildered by the incessant calls to
duty in raising a brood, attending to their needs. Attempting,
fruitlessly to pay attention to household duties, to children’s ongoing
crises simply overwhelmed them.
She soon discovered, that while
she hesitated mightily to ever invite playmates into her mother’s
household, her playmates felt no such compunctions about their own
homes’ state of dishevelment, for unfailingly, it was also brought to
her attention through exposure to the worn and weary atmosphere
prevailing in the homes of others that her mother’s failings were shared
by legions of others. Everyone seemed to live in a shambles of
piled-up laundry, newspaper-littered couches, broken and disdained toys
haphazardly thrown in rejection, and never quite discarded. Kitchens
humbly, unapologetically strewn with unwashed cutlery and dishes, pots
stained and dented, nothing ever placed out of sight into kitchen
cupboards where they belonged. Disorder reigned.
Everything
limned with weeks’ worth of dust, hallways tracked with the outdoor muck
brought heedlessly indoors on unshed shoes. Bedrooms unshamefacedly
musty with unwashed linens, the beds themselves never made up neatly for
the day; windows never thrown wide to air out the night-time atmosphere
of rude and peculiar bodily emanations fogging the air. Poverty, it
seemed to her in retrospect, appeared the guiding framework though it
took her many years to come to that understanding.
She aspired,
even while she despaired over the state of her mother’s house, even
while, if she complained, her mother set her to washing floors,
scrubbing bathtubs, wiping down kitchen cupboards, cleaning the
grime-bespattered stove - none of which really helped, since this was
never a regular routine, merely a convenient, sly punishment - to a
different kind of everyday home life for herself. She would be proud of
her home, and make her home proud of her determination to ensure it was
a hygienic, comfortable atmosphere for everyone who lived there, even
if she would be the only one to be aware of it. She had also noted that
most people felt comfortable enough in their homes, whether or not
measures were taken to instill an environment of cleanliness and order,
through someone’s dedication to achieving that distinction.
All
of this was important to her, but this was all background to her life.
Her insistence to herself on achieving an orderly, neat and tidy life,
internal and external in all its manifestations was merely a hovering
shadow upon which all else rested; it represented a scaffold upon which a
satisfying life could be built. It was not an absolute requirement for
happiness and fulfilment, merely the appetizer that would welcome all
invitations life might offer her, over courses she would avail herself
of throughout the length of her life.
The course of her life
encompassed a fairly normal passage to maturity, and that included a
youthful marriage, and a growing family. She was never, ever a
martinet. Quite content, for the most part, to live with her husband
who had the in-gathering instincts of a crazed magpie. Unlike her, he
was genetically driven to collect. He had fine instincts, a marvellous
sense of curiosity, an aesthetic appreciation of fine things, and a
burning need to learn how to proceed with anything that took his
interest. His sense of comedic timing, his finely-honed and often
sardonic sense of humour never failed to amuse her. His wide-ranging
interests in history, geography, science, fine art and literature
astonished and impressed her.
His one failing remained his
unalterable dedication to gathering objects around him. Books,
magazines, broken appliances, picture frames sans pictures, light
fixtures, plumbing pieces, electrical bits, odd pieces of porcelain
tiles; in short anything that he felt might have value at some point in
the future. Nothing should be heedlessly discarded. He too came to
maturity in a household lacking material comfort. He remained
suspended, the young boy who acquired and accumulated all manner of
potentially needful items, a boy whose pockets always brimmed with
elastic bands, string, emptied pill-boxes, electrical discards. On the
theory, become habit, that you never quite knew when something might
come in handy. He had acquired the habit of scalping an object of its
parts, to be used for the repair of other objects. The-then incomplete
object would be carefully stored in the basement for possible future
use. Over time, the accumulated debris constituted a mountain of
reproachful trash, insulting to her sensibilities.
Once, when
they were young, only their first child yet born, living in their first
little house, she thought she would surprise him. While he was at work,
she laboured to clear the pile of objects from the basement floor,
under the stairs, and hauled the things out to the curb, to be picked up
by the garbage collectors. After she had completed her task, and
thought with satisfaction how grateful he would be that she had done
that, she answered a knock at the front door. A man, well dressed,
asking if it would be all right if he took the large elaborate frame on
the pile she had tossed out to the curb. Garbage, it was garbage, of
course she didn’t mind; help yourself, she said graciously.
Little
did she then realize how stricken her husband would be when she
informed him loftily of what she had accomplished on his behalf. He
rushed down to the basement, stood there, aghast at the clean open space
under the stairs. Her alter ego’s lust for collection, included an eye
for recognizing items of value that might be used at some later date.
The frame in question was hand-made, laboriously and beautifully carved,
mid-19th Century. She never, ever repeated that indiscretion. It
became a standing joke between them. Over the years he might, on
occasion, point out another that resembled the one she had thrown out
(she never recognized any similarity, hardly took notice of the
original; to her it was just junk to be got rid of), lamenting its
uniqueness and loss. But he had never really held it against her.
They
worked out a system that had the value of reasonable accommodation to
them. She would be in charge of everything in the living quarters of
the house, and the basement was his precinct, to do with as he wished.
Of course, over the years, they had owned a succession of homes. In
each of which, over time, he ended up finishing the basement; dividing
portions of it into additional useful living spaces, and keeping part of
it unfinished, for his workshop, and in his workshop he would collect
discards. Until they began, inexorably, spilling over into the finished
spaces. As with books and magazines whose ownership could not be
defended in the numbers he lusted after, but their allure for him could
also not be denied.
As for her, she reigned supreme in the upper
stories of their homes. The two floors, ground and second, were always
immaculate. She dusted, mopped, washed, wiped, scrubbed, and polished.
She developed her routine so perfectly well that even though she spent
far more time than most women doing all these things, they did not,
after all, take all that long; she was inordinately efficient. She took
short-cuts when she began working outside the house once the children
reached their semi-adult, secondary-school stages of life. But no one
would have noticed a lessening in her determination to ensure their home
was clean, neat and well-presented.
So too with their meals.
Always an emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables, comprising a large
part of their diet. Well-prepared and -presented meals, wholesome and
appetizing. No short cuts there. No pre-prepared or take-outs, thanks a
bunch. She had assembled a nice collection of cookbooks. Favouring
especially those dedicated to delicate baked goods. When the children
were small they were often consulted. When they were small, they were
sometimes permitted to ‘help’ their mother bake cookies made colourful
with candy sprinkles. They were allowed to knead bread dough and shape
them into fanciful objects that could be baked. Grey from too much
handling, of course, and inedible, but a lark for the children. Over
time, although she retained her cookbooks, particularly one her husband
had bought in self-defence when they first married and her initial
attempts at cooking had been lamentably pathetic. But she no longer
really needed to consult them. Recipes, or her interpretation of them,
had been consigned to the orderly files of her mind. She remembered the
ingredients required, their sequence and baking time perfectly. Not
merely a few favourite family recipes, but an impressively large number
of various recipes for breads, fruit pies, cookies, savoury pies, salads
and puddings, main course-dishes and everything in between. Solidly,
confidently placed in orderly fashion in her memory files.
She
also became a good and enthusiastic gardener, by default. That default
being watching her then-grown daughter with her own home and garden,
effortlessly and with knowledge in hand, working in her garden. The
same daughter who had inherited her mother’s passion for neatness, but
who had outdone her mother in method sans madness. Whose professional
expertise in architectural design and project management seemed an
outgrowth of her own fascination with order. Her daughter, however,
utterly ruthless in her decided determination to rid herself of all
items extraneous to her current need.
Their sons, on the other
hand, inherited more of their father’s compelling and fascinated sense
of creativity. Expressed through their own choices in biology,
woodworking, pottery, astronomy, history, musical performance. Their
children surpassed all their expectations. Amend that: they held no
insistent expectations, were mostly content to expose their children to
the world as best they could, certain that inspiration for their futures
would compel them to follow their own road less travelled, complemented
by their parents’ well-imbibed values.
An immaculate mind, she
has, this now-elderly woman. She would be horrified to know how her
grandchildren laugh fondly between themselves about Grandma ‘losing her
marbles’, confusing their names, never remembering, it seemed clear
enough to them, from one visit to another, what they had last talked of,
and repeating, endlessly repeating the same observations they had heard
so many yawningly times before.
Observe, she said to herself,
she had become skilled at circumvention, circumlocution, smoothly
talking over lapses in memory, slyly forestalling questions she felt
incapable of responding to, confident that no one had noticed. No one
but herself, for example, would know how some of those mind-garnered
gardening files had begun to dissolve. The names of flowers eluding
her, their habits and needs becoming confused with those of others. No,
not during the growing season, not then. But as summer faded and
blended into fall, then winter, those files became distorted, began to
fade, were difficult to call up. But then, be reasonable, she chided
herself, what need might there possibly be to keep those particular
files accessible during the months that gardening became a dim memory
itself? No need to be concerned. And actually, truth was, there was no
need to be concerned, for as soon as spring asserted itself to be
followed by summer, those names seemed to pop back into neat rows of
botanical nomenclature, readily available for use. What a clever brain,
what a methodical and efficient filing system…. Firing perfectly on all
synapses. Or, rather, they did, fairly reliably.
Yet, and yet.
There have been lapses, entirely too many. Puzzling how they seemed to
accumulate. No, not recalling and speaking of the names of peonies,
roses, phlox, pansies or rhododendrons. The names of everyday objects,
like the little seeds she ground for daily use to be sprinkled over
breakfast toast - what on Earth were they called, now? She could
hardly recall the name of her daughter’s penultimate boyfriend, could
only remember the current one by association. A slight pause in
conversation, then a quick dredging down into the recesses of her mind,
where odd name-associations were stored, to come up with “Mutt and
Jeff”. How’s … Jeff? She would casually ask.
She is certain she
has caught a strange whiff, from time to time, elusive, ephemeral - as
though she has momentarily captured the essence of her brain’s slow
journey into decay. Now, how absurdly fanciful, ghoulish, in fact, is
that? Yet, she mused, one molecule after another could, for all she
knew, be gradually succumbing.
But
why, it’s far too soon! This is inordinately
wrong, unfair. Why
her, with her immaculate obsession with order? This speaks loudly of disorder, a gross violation of the meet and the just!
She
has tended her life carefully, marshalled intelligence, ordered memory
into neat rows of prominence, priorities and values. And the years yet
before her promise ample maneuverability and capture of those neat
files. She is, quite simply, not prepared to submit to chaos,
not yet.
Not ever!
Her anguished being cries out to her external awareness. She will
ensure this sinister awareness of the breakdown of her mental faculties
remains her secret. She is, it is clear enough to herself, entirely too
sensitive, imagining what is not there. What she interprets as
portents of a moving fog of loss leading to a dark abyss reflects her
own heightened sense of the imagination, a surreal nightmare of
sub-existence.
How else explain that her husband, he of the
steel-clad memory sometimes grasps to recall an errant, elusive word?
Try, he tells her gently - so obviously attempting to allay her fears -
try to use word-association a little more often. Sometimes it works,
she knows - more often, for her, it fails. How
can
it work, if her memory bank is slowly depleting? Where are those words
evaporating to? Wispily whisking, floating dreamily, the letters
dislocated, the words bereft of their meaning, off into the ether?
She’d
always loved the challenge of cross-word puzzles, with their subtle
hints to a mind’s orderly files of language. Now they try her patience,
pain her, and she thrusts them away from her. She thinks, from time to
time, she should resume working out the answers, as she had always
done, and in that way exercise her mind, extract those elusive words
from their orderly files, anticipate, expect the words to be
approachable. But
no.
Since
she began experiencing lapses in the neat array of her memory files,
she has become wary and worried. Words simply got mislaid. Oh, not
arcane, little-used words, but ordinary, oft-spoken parts of her
vocabulary. Which had always been proudly extensive. She began to feel
as though the sturdy fibre of her mind’s filing cabinets had begun to
corrode. As though by some odd quirk of the flesh an excess of moist,
unpleasant forgetfulness had assaulted her hitherto spotlessly-reliable
summons on her memory bank. Atrophy.
Her mind, after all, is who she is. What is the mind but a lifetime of memories? Slowly, a quiet terror had overtaken and suffused her sweaty night-time dreams.
She hears that old familiar refrain, spoken internally to herself:
“A place for everything and everything in its place”,
and she gasps with disbelief. Am I mocking myself? Having chiding
little interior conversations? Unable to stop herself, she wails aloud,
to an empty room:
But I have put
everything neatly away, where they belong, all those words that express
the experience of my life. I always have. It’s just that I appear to
have mislaid words. They’re not where they should be, readily
extractable for daily use. They’re not where I left them. They tease
and elude me. I’ve always been good to them, used them well,
appreciated their power, their meaning, their indispensability to human
contact. I’ve stored them diligently, tidily.Why is this happening to me?
I
have always venerated words, the language of our womb-tutored tongues.
How else to communicate but by forming words, those exquisite
conveyances of understanding, emotion, contact, need? Now they lie
shattered, meaning trivialized
, the wholeness of retrieval eviscerated. I stumble in my every breath to recall, invoke them. To no avail.Fix your thought closely on what is being said, and let your mind enter fully into what is being done, and into what is doing it. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
