Bettie Bookish

Ooops, that was me.

I am taking a pilates class, up to the Joonyer College, as they say. And by "they" I mean, "me."

Except for compulsory P.E. classes in grade school, I have never participated in anything of this nature, so everything is quaintly new to me. "Our instructor brings a portable CD player and we listen to music the WHOLE TIME!!"

That sort of thing.

I like the class, and I would probably like it more if I spent more time focusing on making my navel and spine meet and less time thinking about the social dynamic of the room.

There are about 12 people in the class, and many of them have taken previous classes with this instructor.

There are the requisite Blonde Girls who chat before class while stretching and have long conversations of the variety that I always thought occurred only in yogurt and tampon commercials.

There are some 40-something, supertanned, milfs - or more accurately, mYlfs, because I'll take a pass on that action, thank you very much.

There's an older lady who farts pretty regularly during some of the moves, and says sweetly in her tiny voice, "Ooops, that was me." I don't sit right next to her.

There's another older lady who cannot weigh more than 70 pounds.

There are two very well-
groomed investment firm gals who talk a lot about work before and after the actual class, and there's another woman who does temp work at the same firm, so she gets in on the conversation sometimes.

The Temp Worker, who is probably in her 50s, sat next to me one week and told me she is a retired hairstylist. She also told me that she is "cheating" on her diet all over the place, especially when temping at the investment firm because everyone brings in cookies and cakes and ... whatever. I don't have a lot of patience with that kind of conversation.

I have more patience with cupcake anxiety, however, than I do with casual conversation in a pilates class about the offpsring of Abraham and Sarah. Apparently, Temp Worker has been reading her Bible, and found the need to share her revelations (get it?) with a very sweet and quiet college professor who wears a bindi, and is obviously too polite to tell this woman who shut the hell up because pilates class ain't no missionary trip.

Given the choice, I would sit next to the Farting Lady.

When I mentioned my pilates class a couple days ago to my friend Lolita, who had stopped by to allow me to bask in the glory of her baby daughter's beauty, she said, "You're taking a pilates class? Huh."

Last night, over takeout Chinese food at their house, Lolita told us that she had gone home to her husband and said, "Elizabeth's taking a pilates class. We used to smoke and drink together."

We also used to work together, have lunch together almost every day, spend whole weekends together and generally behave in a way that had our other colleagues believing that our children would one day appear on a prime-time news magazine program complaining about our sick lifestyle.

I miss those times.

And my head didn't explode one bit

For the past two months, when I have told people that my dad was coming to stay with us for a week, I was unable to weed out of my voice the tone that said "You have no idea how ridiculous this is.

"My dad is coming?...To stay with us?...For a week?"

"My dad? Just had surgery? To become a woman?"

I have been married twice, and my father did not attend either wedding. On my birthday, I may or may not receive a card or gift. He did not see my son until my child was 4-years-old. He does not know how to pronounce my last name.

He's not that kind of dad.

He's the kind of dad who refers to his newest granddaughter as "(his) daughter's adopted baby from China."

He's the kind of dad who neglected to include a Christmas gift to his daughter's adopted baby from China last year when he sent the rest of us gifts.

Because my daughter deserves a grandfather who at the very least calls her his granddaughter, I invited himt o come experience our family bliss and do a little bonding with Buttercup.

I assumed, of course, that we would be hosting him in our newly repaired home - from which we have been displacwed since April for Hurricane repairs. I certainly never would have extended an invitation for him to stay with us in my mother's house. My mother's house, which used to be my parents' house. The house that they bought together, the house where their fighting so often woke my brother and me, the house from which my mother dragged my brother and me one night at 2 a.m. to flee to her mother's, the house where our parents sat us down in the living room to tell us the (not very) shocking and sad news that they were getting divorced, the house where something told me that spontaneously bursting into cheerful song was the wrong reaction to the divorce news, the house where my mom got lonely(er) and depressed and drank too much and neglected things, the house where all the carpets are stained and the cigarette smell still lingers a year and a half and hundreds of wall washings after her death, the house where we're still stuck because Smoky McGruff and his Crack Team of home improvers have consistently had to perform every job no fewer than three times in order to get the "improvement" part right.

My...dad...is...coming...to...stay...with...us...?

Actually, he already came and went, and I spent the week going lalalalalalalala, What visit? What dad? What carpet stains? What painful and embarassing family history? Who wants cake?

What undoubtably will happen is that, over the next few (months, years, decades) days, as I recall the erstwhile glossed-over points of the visit, I will reel in horror, sigh in relief or explode in unpredictable rage. It should be fun.

Meanwhile, we are scheduled to return to our house tomorrow. For real this time. Honest.

Waiting in gas lines on E

Katrina acted like a tropical storm here in the westernmost part of Florida. The wind was fierce, and there were a few flooded streets. We lost power for a while.

This is becoming a bore.

-Hey, Elizabeth, what's your blog about?
-Weather.

Here is something I wrote for the paper, followed by the best bit of mail I've received in a long time.

Enjoy it.

Meanwhile, please keep Anni and Moreena in your thoughts and prayers.

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The machine hum of generators and chain saws. The piles, heaps and waves of debris. The vacant, stunned expressions of survivors. Red Crosses and Blue Roofs.

This isn’t what I want to write. I don’t want to think about it, and neither do you.

Let’s make a deal and not talk about it - not think about it at all. Not think about this horrible - no, UNIMAGINABLE - thing that has happened. Let’s not think about the fact that it could ever happen again.

Can we talk about something else? Is there something on television we could watch? Can we go shopping?

Maybe we can buy a couple of 35,000-calorie coffee drinks and leaf through fashion and shelter magazines imagining that nail polish and designer sheets were all that need to occupy our breezy thoughts.

Uh-oh, I said “breezy.” I’m sorry; it won’t happen again.

I know, I know. Shopping and reading magazines and watching TV won’t make this go away.

Did it happen to you, too? Did your deep sigh of relief turn into a long, sick heave when you saw what happened?

My cousin is there in Gulfport. The day before the storm, I heard through another relative that she decided not to evacuate.

She and her husband moved there this summer, and maybe she wanted to stay in her new home. And since she is expecting a baby boy any week now, who can blame her for being reluctant to pack up her household and haul it to higher ground?
The day of the storm, my stomach hurt until I heard that she was okay.

But then, that was the day of the storm.

Big, bad things seem bearable the day they happen. Something holy (or insane, depending on your perspective) stiffens your spine and clears your vision just long enough to get you to a place where it’s safe to fall on all fours, or crawl under the covers or strike whatever is your personal bewilderment pose.

My personal favorite the classic Denial Stance. I’m like a mountaintop yogi who has spent her life perfecting this move. Did I tell you I spent the day after Katrina shopping for a new vacuum because company was coming to town?

Katrina who? Let me tell you about my new friend, Dyson.

Both my husband and my best friend Lolita always fall back on the Burn Down the Forest Position.

There is a movie titled “The Edge,” (maybe you have caught it one of the 300,000 times it has aired on cable TV) in which Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin survive a plane crash only to contend with man-eating bears, a harsh Alaskan wilderness and David Mamet’s dialogue. Lolita and my husband agree that the most efficacious solution to the characters’ problem would be to burn down the forest.

They’re action-oriented people, and that’s why I love them.

But if you can’t deny something, and you can’t burn it down or fix it or make it go away, what do you do?

0Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco asked people to pray. A lot of us were way ahead of her. Even if you’re not the praying type, I’ll bet you whispered, “Oh, God” when you saw those flooded neighborhoods, rescue helicopters and crowded shelters.

Maybe all we can do is pray. But prayer doesn’t have to be on your knees.

Prayer can be a check or a pint of blood given with the hope that it finds the person who needs it most. Prayer can be an open door to someone whose doors and windows were blown away. Prayer can be a phone call to your cousin to let her know that it’s okay if she’s not okay today, because things will get better. We’re thinking about you.

All of us here are thinking about all of you there.

What Katrina did was unimaginable. And from where we’re standing now, recovery seems just as unimaginable.

But the human imagination is limited.

In “The Prophet,” Khalil Gibran wrote: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Our spirits been carved deeply by the storms we’ve witnessed. Time will reveal the rich, ornate beauty of what has survived.
And when those hollow spaces fill with joy, no wind or wave will be able to touch us.

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Dear Ms. Bookish:

Your article in the 9/04/05 "Praying for recovery......" was right on. For the first time in an aeon (a crossword answer variation of the word eon, meaning a LONG time) we didn't have to hear about your cancer, your children and family with weird flower or Mexican/Spanish names, or your personal grief. Bravo!!

I have always looked forward to your opines, but for the last aeon they have become loathsome as you repeat, in Roget's invariable ways, the same self-suffering stories again and again. For once in an aeon, you have written an article (and I'm going to use the most detestable cliché borne in the new millennium) "outside the box" - talking about others' strife instead of your own. Keep up the good work!

Very truly yours,

ECB