I Don't Have a Happy Place (22 page)

“I'm not putting anything on this tree,” Buzz said, after being wrangled to join me on my excursion. He had rules and principles for everything.

“Fine.”

“Like no star at the top or angels or anything like that.”

“Obviously no angels,” I said. “We're Jewish.”

“And none of that silver string stuff.”

“Tinsel?”

“Yeah. No tinsel.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I just want to go on record as saying I am officially against this tree,” Buzz said, securing his gloves so that he didn't get hurt by pine needles. “If the dog eats it and dies or water spills everywhere, you have to deal with it.”

“Absolutely.” I often agree to Buzz's terms but rarely follow them. “Can you just help me carry it home?”

He sighed. “I gotta do everything around here.”

After much deliberation, I pointed toward my desired tree.

“That one?” he said. “It looks dead.”

“It's not dead. It's hilarious.”

“Does our Christmas tree have to be funny?”

“Kind of.”

“It's a runt.”

I then delivered a line Buzz was famous for giving me. “You can't be against this and also have input.”

Hoist by his own stupid petard, he helped me rescue the challenged sapling and bring it home.

Once settled in by the window, the tree looked naked. And dejected. I felt sort of bad for it. I knew it had spent its life unpopular and friendless in the Canadian forest. And every time I walked by it, a sense of malaise and loneliness came over me. I thought I was being a do-gooder, rescuing a loser tree no one else wanted, but all it made me do was think about all the other losers­ out in the world. All the people who were alone on the holidays, eating French bread pizza in their basement apartments, considering asphyxiation. My tree made me sad for all the sad people out there. People with nowhere to go. People who hid in their dark rooms until the second of January, when all the merriment and sparkly shit was over. My people. There were tons of us in towns all over America, probably even Canada. The morale sappers, the downbeat, the petulant—we were everywhere. And then it finally hit me why I love Christmas so much.

Despondency is traditionally a solitary event. Feeling kind-of-bad a lot of the time, like I do, is barely an event at all. If you bother to explain constant malaise, people roll their eyes, thinking you're just trying to get attention or that you're a hypochondriac or
jealous that you don't have celiac. But at Christmastime we have brethren. There are legions of sad sacks all over the nation, hunkered down alone or, worse, with family, who tell them to snap out of it and remind them of people out there with real problems.

People say the Christmas spirit is about kindness and giving—maybe so. But the unsung part of Christmas is having really low, terrible spirits. These days, however, mental health has an excellent PR machine behind it. Especially in December. If you tell someone you find the world a sad and lonely place on a Tuesday, they smile and back away and go talk to someone else at the bank. But if you share that the holidays make you blue, it's become perfectly acceptable. At Christmas, you are not alone in your aloneness. You don't even have to fake it till you make it or whatever nonsense your therapist or Page-A-Day calendar tells you. You can go ahead and feel bad all you want. You can listen to “I'll Be Home for Christmas” and weep, you can not show up to parties, you can stuff down Santa's cookies to try filling the void. It's a mental-health all-you-can-eat buffet. With presents. It makes me positively giddy.

Understanding that the uncheery had their very own season gave me a whole new reason to buy a tree. The year after our loser tree, I went a different route, purchasing one from Urban Outfitters—white-and-silver, acrylic, with poseable arms. It never required sweeping or watering, which, if you're in the doldrums, can really take great effort. Plus with no heavy lifting or potential water spillage, there was little for Buzz to complain about.

“Oh, you're still doing this,” he said, when he saw me dragging the delivery box into the brownstone.

He told me that if the tree fell over, I had to pick it up.

“I thought you liked tradition,” I said. “Christmas is like the tradition of all traditions.”

“Not for Jews!”

He still didn't get it.

And then came the kids. If Christmas wasn't for the darn children, then who was it for?

“The Gentiles,” said Buzz, packing up the car for Vermont. We would only be up there for a week, so I boxed up our acrylic tree and Buzz couldn't grouse because we had a basement in which to store it. That year I had a penchant for all things turquoise and bought some Christmas balls to match my obsession. I spent hours arranging the arms and balls to look just the way I'd seen Martha Stewart do it.

“Looks good,” said Buzz.

“You think?” I said, tilting my head. “I dunno. Looks too Jewish.”

“What?”

“All the blue and white. It's like a Hanukah tree at the bank.”

•   •   •

When we moved to Vermont permanently, and Christmas rolled around, we were finally in a real house with real room for a real tree. It was time to begin with the ornaments. With themes. Every year each family member would choose (or, in the case of Buzz, have chosen for him) an ornament representing him- or herself over that past year. The tree is covered in Matchbox cars and lip balm and key chains from different places we've lived. Finally my tree had personality and lights and enough nostalgia to really make me morose.

When everyone went to bed, I could sit in front of it and feel weepy about how everything was going by so fast and how even though the kids were still in footie pajamas it would only be a matter of minutes before they were off to college and not wanting to come home for the tradition I'd spent their entire lives trying to create for them. Alone with my tree, I could eat cookies and cry and feel as bad as I wanted. It was a Christmas wish
come true. Hanukah candles burn fast and bright. It's fleeting. But the tree sits there for weeks, allowing me to nurture my pit of despair. I can feel thankful for what I have and awful that I don't have the tools to appreciate it. I can admire my handiwork on the tree and also suffer guilt for potentially being a bad Jew. A tree can do all that for me, and then some.

When the kids rip into their Hanukah socks or Christmas Batman Castle, I want to give them the spiel about how the holidays are not just about presents. But then they'd ask me what they
were
all about and I'd have to change the subject because I only have vague information about oil and the desert but not enough to make a point. I don't think they even know who Jesus is, unless it's to use his name in vain, and I don't even know how to begin explaining that guy. And I certainly don't want to spark the idea in them that the holidays are about bad feelings. They can figure that one out on their own.

Buzz often says we are cultural Jews. I take that to mean I am Jewish because I am nervous and also prefer dry, overcooked chicken. But when I think about how I really enjoy wallowing in a vat of despair around the holidays and then also feel guilty about it, I think maybe that's how I bring my Jewishness into the mix. I make a mental note to do better, to locate some matzo, to write a treatment for a television special called
It Would Have Been Enough for Us, Charlie Brown
. I would watch it with my kids every year.

In the meantime, I continue to increase my Christmas tradition by embracing a new trapping every year. Ornaments, handmade advent calendars. This year, I want stockings. I can't help myself. Mingling my grim attitude with decking the halls feels like home to me. Feeling miserable and enjoying it, that's who I am. For I—sorry, Nana—I am a Christmas Jew.

In No Particular Order

• • • • • •

I
n the movie version of my life, the role of me is played by Catherine Keener. As for who portrays my husband, there is hubbub in the casting office. I am adamant about wanting Don Draper but they tell me Jon Hamm is busy, and I say I have no interest in Jon Hamm, I only want Don Draper. They speak slowly when they tell me he is a fictional character on a television program, which, I mutter, is no excuse. Some headshot shuffling ensues until an assistant suddenly remembers that Don Draper is currently on location. She then shares that he is about to be indefinitely tied up because—and here she lowers her voice, signaling we are in quiet cahoots—he is strongly being considered to be the new James Bond. I wink, just to let her know her secret is safe with me.

I ask for Mark Ruffalo but they say he's hard to work with. Paul Rudd is at an eating disorder camp. No one will believe Johnny Depp is a Jew. Eventually we settle on Robert Downey Jr., who, at the time of production, will be on his eighteenth valiant comeback. Now, since this is my fantasy, I make up all kinds of things about myself. For starters, I play piano. I can pull off wearing ‘70s-style dance wear in my daily life. I can drive a stick,
stay up past nine p.m., and I like people. I am also a type A personality.

In my real life, I am a type F personality. My dearest friend, the Shirley to my Laverne, she is type A. Shirley (not her real name) is enviable for other reasons, too. She wears a size zero, thinks it's fun to vacuum, and alphabetizes her spices. She is lovely and charismatic and ridiculously well liked. I wear regular-sized-person clothes. My vacuum is heavy. And, frankly, I'm more of an acquired taste—acquired by a scant few. I am the Good & Plenty of people.

When I am with Shirley, I feel inspired to leave my F status behind and sprint up the type alphabet. And so, in an effort to be more A-ish, I decide to run a controlled experiment. Perhaps if I borrow some of Shirley's customs, osmosis will occur. Lists are what immediately come to mind. Shirley is forever making them, so I decide to try my hand at a nice, crisp list.

First up, the To-Do. This is a beginner's list. Simple in nature, pretty hard to mess up. Nonetheless, I am an F, so this list proves complicated. I spend way too much time trying to find the ideal pad, the sublime pen. I stare at a blank page for half the day, laboring over what to write. Should I jot down things like
make doctor's appointment
,
or is it more of a grander To-Do, something along the lines of
learn Spanish
and
knit poncho
? This takes up most of my day, and before I know it I am asleep on the couch as
House Hunters
drones in the background.

The next day, I outsmart the list. I go about my business, and as soon as I do anything short of breathing, I write it down and at once cross it off. I include all daily tasks, even
brush teeth,
so as to have a fat list. I walk around the house (a lot), then write down
exercise
and tick it off.

A few days in, I tire of the To-Do. My fetching notepad gets pushed under the bed, where it will remain for the year, like a second grader's recorder. This kind of list-making seems like too
much pressure for someone with follow-through issues. Here I could easily abandon ship, but no, I am dedicated to change.

Part of what makes Shirley so organized involves lists, yes, but who's to say what kind of list? Isn't a list a list? Lucky for me, I have spent much of my life trying to find loopholes. This is energy I am comfortable expending and a place where I can blossom. I do not forgo the experiment—I tweak it.

Let's begin with . . .

WORDS I DON'T CARE FOR

1. panties

2. playdate

3. moist

4. gubernatorial

5. blog

6. mound

7. poached

8. hash tag

9. mixologist

10. Croissan'wich

11. pubes

12. barista

13. luncheon

14. whiff

This type of list gets me jazzed. I come up with its cousin.

SAYINGS/EXPRESSIONS THAT ANNOY ME

1. Cool beans.

2. Keep calm and carry on.

3. Brain fart.

4. We're not worthy. (Extra credit for the dumb bowing hand gesture.)

5. Do me a solid.

6. Put on your big-girl panties.

7. My bad.

8. Date night. (
Playdate
could easily fit here.)

9. That being said. (I prefer simply
that said
or
having said that.
)

10. Kick it up a notch.

11. The whole fan damily.

12. Hot mess.

I soon discover this list has a nascent little sister.

WORDS OR PHRASES I DON'T ACTUALLY MIND,

JUST CAN'T GET AWAY WITH SAYING

1. No worries.

2. Buddy.

3. Man. (As in
Hey, man
, not
D
id you see that bearded man?
)

4. Fabulous.

Things are looking up. I get a jittery sensation in my gut, the same one I felt in the eighth grade during the only four-minute chunk of math I ever understood. I should note here that this is usually the point in any undertaking when I decamp. A modicum of achievement is usually my cue to exit stage left. But, if you were paying attention, I am not being myself, I am being Shirley. So I challenge myself with . . .

THINGS I TRY REALLY HARD NOT TO DO

1. overuse the exclamation mark

2. talk about the weather (Unless it's snowy/icy/could-have-an-accident-while-driving weather. I'm a little interested in this kind of talk, more doomsday, less pressure systems.)

3. use song lyrics as a status update on Facebook (
It's just another manic Monday, people!!
Also, this style of update can generate overuse of the exclamation mark.)

4. eat popcorn or other movie snacks before picture commences

5a. use emoticons (Happy to report I have never employed a smiley or winky or pissy guy. Ever.)

5b. or worse: LOL, ROFL, SMH, LMAO, FML (However, the occasional BTW or old-school FYI are okay and therefore grandfathered in.)

I do have a list that never sees the light of day, but in the spirit of the experiment I will share it.

REASONS I WISH I WERE AN OLD LADY

1. Always acceptable to go to bed at 7:30.

2. Okay to sit in chair at social gatherings and stare into space.

3. Can wear heavy woolen cardigans year round.

4. Don't have to participate in impromptu football or ­Frisbee tosses.

5. Appropriate to notice and discuss weird and potentially life-threatening ailments or symptoms.

6. On beautiful and sunny days, no pressure to go outside and have fun.

I suddenly feel weak from all this list making and need to sit down. From the couch, I survey my bookshelf, which not only helps to restore my energy but gives me an idea for another list.

BOOK JACKET SUMMARIES FROM NOVELS

YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME READING

(and the exact point in the summary-reading where I reject book and put it back on shelf)

1. Major General Edwin Twiggs knew it would be an enduring, dusty walk home from the battle of Chickahominy, but he tightened his canvas gaiters and commenced his journey . . .

2. Beautiful Rose Eldridge and fiery Olivia Stickley have been the best of friends since third grade. But when one of them is diagnosed with a rare, inoperable cancer . . .

3. For fourteen thousand years, the planet Kreegon has had one leader . . .

4. Newlyweds Jennifer and Jason Jones thought their lives were perfect—and then they brought home Mr. Scruffers.

5. England. The 1520s . . .

I am now buzzing with just enough vim to continue my work. Shirley is never lazy, so, in an effort to also seem not lazy, I eke out one more. It's a bit of a hodgepodge—the junk drawer of lists; my blood sugar is low. At any rate . . .

RANDOM THINGS THAT MAKE ME HOSTILE

1. sudoku

2. Napa Valley (or any talk of trips to wine country)

3. jogging

4. gluten intolerance

5. zucchini

6. up-speak

7. footnotes

At this point, I'm quite pleased with myself and am just about to call it a day, when I remember that I almost forgot the best list of all. This is a primo list.
And
it is one that Shirley and I have joined forces on. Known simply as the List, all either of us has to say is, “It's on the list,” and all is immediately understood. Because Shirley is an avid participant in this list, it fits in with my original goal and feels like the extra-credit take-home work I never once in my life took home. Having spent my entire school
career being the She Has So Much Potential/If Only She Applied Herself type, I've never once gotten a gold star. Shirley, however, practically bleeds gold stars. I visualize our list with the shiny emblem on the top right-hand corner. I present you with . . .

THINGS THE ENTIRE WORLD THINKS ARE TERRIFIC ­AND/OR FUN BUT I DON'T

1. convertibles

2. New Year's Eve

3. Monopoly

4. eating at the beach

5. champagne, roses, and chocolate-dipped strawberries

6. traveling

7.
Mamma Mia!

8. parades

9. fancy chocolate desserts (mousse and flourless tortes and anything with “Death by Chocolate” in the title)

10. Cirque du Soleil

11. Shirley says “pancakes” (I can't get behind this).

12. I say “college” (Shirley says I am on my own here).

I'm completely athrill; I'm actually doing it! Two days ago I was sitting in my car trying to remember what errand I had set out to do, and, just like that, I've become a mad list maker, quite possibly easing myself up the alphabet. A few more successful days like this and Shirley and I will be having sweater depilling
parties, vacuum-offs, filing relays. I feel like jumping on my coffee table and acting out the old-school York Peppermint Pattie commercial. It's all happening.

It doesn't take long before the excitement wanes. Eventually, as with most of my endeavors, I decide I am doing it wrong. Who am I kidding? I am not accomplishing anything by making lists. I haven't moved up a station. I am my regular old F self, wasting my days enumerating stuff I hate. Don't get me wrong, it's a hell of a time. Now that I'm a Vermonter, I spend my time differently than when I lurked in the city. I still pace around outside instead of writing, but there are fewer people watching me do this. If I was parked on my front stoop for too long, the neighbors might start to talk about or, worse, to me. But in this fresh new setting I can enjoy hours sizing up nature-type things from a chair on the porch and no one is the wiser.

I have to hand it to myself: I have an unusual capacity for reclusiveness. I can clock hours alone in my house in the woods, getting lathered about what bugs me. I am good at this. However, I don't get full of myself or go on some big ego trip about my deftness and personal gifts. Instead I use it for good and come up with more big life ideas.

Buzz has made fun of me, more than once, about how I could very well be the Unabomber. This idea might have legs. I live in the middle of nowhere now. I look slightly disheveled most of the time. Granted, I wasn't that great in school, but I do love the mail. I have all kinds of thoughts and ideas and umbrage—why couldn't I write a manifesto? Why couldn't I be a neighborly, likes-to-bake type of Unabomber? A Jewnabomber.

This idea excites me. I pace the front porch, waiting for Buzz to get home so I can fill him in on the new plan. After a few minutes of this, I run upstairs and put on my red plaid cotton flannel from Old Navy to really hit the whole Jewnabomber thing hard,
so that it's a no-brainer when he pulls up the driveway and sees me. We used to live on a congested street with speedy cars and smoking teenagers, but now our house sits atop a grassy hill and the only things that pass are intermittent UPS trucks and tick-dropping deer.

There is not even an inkling of a car approaching our dirt road, but I can wait. I have mountains of patience. My porch is twenty-four feet long, excellent for pacing and getting fired up, which I now am. Being solo, I can say “manifesto,” out loud, just to hear what it sounds like. Sounds pretty good. This could very well change my life. This might even be the very thing I was meant to do,
the
reason to get off the couch. Change is afoot.

I sit on the ugly wicker loveseat I insisted on buying from Basket­ville. I begin to recognize that the only thing I know about a manifesto is that thing Tom Cruise wrote in
Jerry Maguire.
(Note to self: Add
Show me the money
to the Expressions That Annoy Me list.) And just as with most of the inspired ideas that wake me up in the night—starting a vintage Smurf figurine collection, homeschooling the kids—I abort plan. I go back inside, hang up my red plaid from Old Navy, and eat crackers. It is clearly time to call Shirley.

Shirley is not home. Shirley is probably out accomplishing stuff. I hate Shirley.

I want to take to my bed, but I feel bad for Catherine Keener. She's so groovy, and I owe her a stellar role—more character development, a better wardrobe, actual stuff to do. I just don't see her as the kind of broad who slouches in dreadful wicker seating wanting to call it quits because her short-lived dreams of being a list-making Unabomber are prematurely dashed. No one will believe it of her, no matter how talented and plucky she is. I need to do better for Catherine Keener. Plus I also have to
consider Robert Downey Jr., since for most of this picture so far he's been MIA.

I give myself a pep talk. Usually this is where I'd get in a fight with myself, so I consider my snappy life coaching a step in a different direction, maybe even something Shirley would do. I am back to finding my Shirleyness. Listing is not all that makes Shirley Shirley. Lots of things make her a lifelong A. It's just that I can't seem to think of one of them at this moment. This is strange, because Shirley and I have been tangled in each other's lives since we were mini Type As and Fs.