Smooth Brain
Wrinkled Face

Here’s how it works. First we get this really smooth velvety skin, ever so slightly suffused with the subtle glow of blood passing beneath. Further up we have the brain, which better be deeply, deeply ridged and rippling with the impulses that enable us to sing, dance, stand on our heads and pick our noses clean.

That’s how we begin. But eventually things turn inside-out. Synapses still fire but spark-out sometimes in mid arc, spilling ash into the brain canyons which fill up like the grooves in a worn-out LP.

Meanwhile the face starts to look more like a young brain. In a prehistoric turn, ridges and valleys start up from the shimmering veldt. The once deep pools of our eyes begin to dry up from the edges, their shores now ringed with multiple water marks. Underground streams have carried all our dewy moisture down, down, where it rests in a heavy swaying puddle right under the chin.

More than all the facial wrinkles and grooves (which can suggest an athleticism of character) I despise this catch-all condition of the chin. I am considering a procedure. Yep—I’m really almost ready to do a chin lift.

Maybe we can’t recognize our own mortality, but I do worry about it all the time. A woman might think a good facelift, ever-dazzling hair and body reshaping make her look nineteen, but she recognizes and mocks that same deceit in someone else. Sixty never looks like nineteen. So I’d like to accept this and not kid around about what’s really down the road. We change, grind down and die. I need a strong chin to deal with this.

I go to Tower, choose a leg of lamb and ask the ever-sullen butcher to bone it.

He does, and I say, “Thanks.” Turning away, he says, “No problem.”

What does this mean? And what was the problem he’d escaped? It’s true, there is a knife involved in boning and that does suggest risk; however, for an alleged professional this should be far less perilous than walking across any intersection.

Should I share his relief that nothing bad happened, perhaps congratulate him and inquire about his family? Or should I feel guilty, which is what I almost always feel when I hear, “no problem.”

You’re welcome—it’s the demise of that small grace note that bothers me. No problem, feels like a slap for some mysterious offence, and it makes me walk away unhappy.

Is this strange and alienating remark ever called for? Well, if I caught a baby as it fell from an open window, wheeled around at the moment the terrified parent crashes from the door, then tenderly lay the intact child into his trembling arms, then I could say it,—"Hey bro, no prob!"

Paint

Here’s what happened when we decided to paint our bedroom and living room.

First, we realized we’d never thought much about designing a home together. For the past 35 years, all the places we’ve lived have been furnished with the same old stuff, mostly hand-me-downs, and these pieces now float incoherently between the cream colored walls of this house.

Once we really looked at this haphazard creation, just tidying up surfaces seemed like a cover up. We had to do a garage sale. This revealed the true condition of the basement--it was a dank rabbit hole reeking of deep disorder and sucking neglect. We’d have to sheet rock over that.

Meantime, we'd also been collecting paint swatches and samples. In six months we'd accumlated dozens of 3”x 4” swatches and forty little jars of color from Benjamin Moore. Every choice had been wrong. I thought--if we can’t even choose paint, we can’t stay married. We could decide to do nothing, simply recognize that we'd tried to get off the couch and couldn't, then flopped back for another download of Roku. At that point, weak confused and frightened, I saw the mess we were sitting on and felt helpless to take action.

Fortunately, at just that moment,a lucky breeze sallied by freshening our reason—we decided to re-sod the backyard! And all it took was a phone call. The lawn was rolled out in just five hours and looks like a miniature golf course. We’ve sat outside and admired it, most often when the splintering universe sets to howling inside the house

This Paint Project has come with some big roots and it feels like doing therapy—risky and at some point inevitable because, as my great-grandmother used to say, the deeper you dig, the worse it smells. But we’re doing it. And we’re old. I think we’re courageous because neither of us knows what this will be when all the pieces settle.