What is That Thing Nuns Wear?

Oh, yes. A habit.

But the nuns probably don't say: "I am going to wash my habit." or "Hang on a sec, let me put on my habit." They probably just say "I'm going to do laundry." Or "I've gotta get dressed."

Because the habitiness of a habit becomes invisible after a while.

So, I called my folks yesterday and mother told me that they bought a dishwasher. "Oh dear God," I said. "How is Dad taking it?"

Because my father has a thing with the dishes.

When I was growing up, it never seemed out of the ordinary to me that my father did an enormous amount of the housecleaning. Both my folks worked full time and my mom did most of the cooking. So it all seemed to work out pretty fair. To the extent that I gave it any thought, I probably just assumed that my old man was an enlightened guy.

Which, you know, he mostly is.

But I think that part of it is also a slight compulsiveness. This is most evident with the dishes. With hilarious consequences.

When it's my parents' turn to host a holiday meal, my father hovers around the table, waiting for dishes to wash.

Father: "You done with that plate? Let me take it for you."

Feemus: "I think I might have seconds in a minute."

Father: "Great. You can have them on a nice clean plate."

And then he reaches for it. Even if there's still food on it. Food I intend to eat.

Good grief. My sister and I joke that over the years we've developed the "prison-yard grip," hunched over our dish with the non-fork arm (left for her, right for me) snaked around the plate for protection. "Get away from my chow," we've learned to snarl.

We're totally ready for the big house.

But the really funny thing is the coffee cup situation.

If you ever visit my perfectly lovely parents, here's a bit of advice: never, under any circumstances, set your coffee cup down. Anywhere. It will get whisked away and washed, even if it is full of coffee.

Astonishingly, I have a kind of temporary amnesia about this behavior--I always momentarily forget what's going to happen. My sister, too.

Here's a typical scene when my sister and I go for a visit. For the full effect, you need to include bemused partners looking on (we've both made inter-species matches: coffee-drinkers with non-coffee-drinkers):

Feemus: "Hey Dad, have you seen my coffee cup?"

Father: "Did you want some more coffee? I'll go make a fresh pot."

Feemus: "No, no. I'm just looking for my cup."

Father: "I'll make a new pot. It'll be done in a jiff."

Feemus: "No, that's ok. Just gonna find my cup. It has coffee in it."

Father [somewhat evasively]: "Oh, um, it might have gotten washed."

Sister [entering]: "Hi guys. Have either of you seen my coffee cup?"

Father: "Hi honey. Your brother just asked me to make another pot. Ready in five minutes."

Sister: "No, I was just..."

[Feemus and Sister finally realize (for the 400th time) what's going on]

Sister: "...I guess I just misplaced it. I'll make another pot."

Feemus: "I'll help."

[Feemus and Sister walk off giggling]

FIN

Well, at least I know where I get my habit of pretending not to understand questions that I don't want to answer.

So, I'm not sure what my poor father will do now that they have a dishwasher. My mom handed off the phone and I asked him how he liked it. "It's great," he said. But I could hear the tension in his voice.

So I called my sister. "Did you hear that the old folks got a dishwasher?" I asked.

She had not only heard, she'd gone for a visit over the weekend and had seen the beast in action. "It's nice," she said. I asked her how our father was coping. "Oh, it's pretty much the same. Now he just takes your stuff and puts it in the dishwasher. I had four separate cups on Sunday morning and he threw half my breakfast away when I got up to take a phone call."

We laughed. Then she said, "You know what's really funny?"

"What?" I asked in perfect innocence of how the answer would forever shatter my peace.

"You do the same thing."





Oh.

The Unbeatable Slow Machine

Philip Larkin is easy to despise.

He made a career out of whining about his career. Most of us would be thrilled to make a living writing poems about the dissatisfaction of writing poems and about how women (or men) just don't understand us. Most of us don't get awards and tenure and buckets of cash for our dissatifactions. We just get ulcers and divorces, while Larkin cashed in, and still complained.

It's enough to make you want to do that obnoxious violin thing with your thumb and forefinger.

Except, you know, he's brilliant. No one else quite captures how much an objectively good life can suck. How baffling it can be when nothing's gone wrong but yet nothing seems to be right. The unsettling feeling that life is living us. All the self-indulgent (and self-consciously guilty about it) miseries of happy lives.


His birthday was earlier this month. Happy Birthday, you crotchety dead S.O.B.

Here's a poem:

Ignorance

Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.

Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,

Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions -
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
Have no idea why.