Forever...and a Day

On our way to the schoolbus stop the other day, my daughter started arguing. Nothing new there. This kid would argue with her shadow, if that were possible.

There we are, heading for the corner on a pleasant spring morning, and she looks up at the robin's-egg sky and asks me how big the universe is. Out of the blue, so to speak. So I say It goes on forever, so she says But how big is it?, so I say You can't measure it, so she says You can measure everything, so I say Our brains aren't sophisticated enough to comprehend the concept of forever, there's no end to forever, so she says Everything ends sometime, so I say They have ways of studying these things, so she says Who are "they"?, so I say The cosmologists, so she says If I become a cosmologist, I'll prove there's an end to forever, so I say How about a cosmetologist, there's no end of them.

Just then the bus pulls up, ending our conversation.

By the time I walk in the back door, my head hurts. Nothing new there. My husband is sitting in the sun at the kitchen table drinking coffee (did I mention this was a pleasant spring morning?). I pour myself a jolt and join him. We stare, jointly, out into the backyard, where hummingbirds buzz the feeder ten days ahead of schedule and a pair of cherry trees in the "back forty" are exploding in delicate bloom. A herd of siskins is singing so loudly we can hear them inside the house.

I lower my coffee cup and turn to my husband and ask him to explain the universe. He reads National Geographic, he knows about these things. While I'm stuffing my head with People, my husband is boning up on The Singularity and the theory of Eternal Recurrence. Which, as I understand it, means just what its name implies: starting with the Big Bang, the universe continues to expand until reaching maximum expansion, at which point it begins to contract until reaching maximum contraction, which is followed by another Big Bang, and so on. The whole shebang keeps repeating itself, like some humongous rubberband, for eternity.

Which could explain alot.

For instance time travel, and worm holes, and where all those lost safety pins go. Or why I had major deja vu the first time I met my husband. I mean, I knew this guy, who I'd never laid eyes on, I fucking knew him. How was that possible? Perhaps because a certain configuration of our individual atoms co-existed during some lifetime a billion-trillion years ago, and now those particular individual configurations have "recurred," resulting in the recognition, the familiarity we felt from the beginning. This is big news for the soul-mate crowd. And what's a few quadrillion years in the grand scheme of things? We're talking eternity, pal.

I think of my husband as my soul-mate. He thinks of me as a problem to solve. Either way, our atoms sing to each other. Like siskins. Sometimes they sing so loudly, I can't hear myself think. I think this is the effect my husband is going for. (All this thinking...I need an aspirin.)

Here's what I really think: Joni Mitchell said it, we are stardust. Everything we're made of, every atom of our being, every atom of everything around us in the universe, was there at the beginning. And the beginning before that. And the beginning before that, and so on, and...Oh.My.God. An eternally-recurring series of beginnings must likewise be accompanied by an eternally-recurring series of endings, and when you look at it that way...My Daughter Is Right! There is an end to forever. In fact, an unending number of ends.

Unlike this post, which ends here.

Haute Couture

I spent my birthday in a graveyard. My husband and daughter and I had a sushi/mimosa picnic beside the pond at Park Hill, while two jet contrails crossed high above us and the peepers chorused steadily from the cattails.

There's something about cemeteries. Acres of meticulously-maintained green spaces with nobody in them. Nobody above-ground, that is. Since I was a kid, I've loved hanging out in cemeteries, wandering among the gravestones, reading names and dates, imagining life stories. I'm especially drawn to those crumbling old markers topped with lambs or angels. Am I weird? I once read where Jessica Lange said the first place she checks out whenever she goes on location is the local boneyard. Is she weird?

Not to mention the birds and wildlife one finds there. On my birthday we were joined by blackbirds, robins, Canada geese, mallards, kingfishers, a pair of turkey vultures and several returning warblers. In the past, in addition to the usual suspects, I've run across deer, fox, raccoons, weasels, a woodchuck and several returning bears.

This thought first crossed my mind in my twenties: When my wardrobe is finally perfected, I can die. Is this weird? In my lifelong struggle to put together The All-Inclusive Closet, it feels like I'm always one shirt short of a shutout. For instance, I'll be set for Winter Everyday, but sadly lacking in Summer Heatwave. Or say I get the June-July-August thing going, my November is a decade behind. And don't get me started on Spring.

I'm a desperate shopper. I only shop when I'm desperate. Unlike my mother, for whom shopping was an artform. There's one thing I detest worse than shopping, and that's thinking about having to shop. But I also detest the idea of schlepping through life in sweatpants. Pull-ease. Running shoes are for running, jack. So I've managed to cultivate my own eclectic, er, look over the years...I can't bring myself to use the word style...and, as we all know, looks need maintaining.

Then last week, in the lead-up to a weekend event we were attending, I had this Aha! moment: my closet is reaching critical mass! I might actually be only one or two percentage points shy of solvency in the "Ready-for-Any-Contingency" department. There I was, midnight Tuesday, lying in bed gearing up for angst-ridden-insomnia as I began contemplating an ensemble suitable for Late-April-On-The-Shore-Evening-Wedding-Reception...and I had it covered! No Shopping Necessary! I was aghast.

That realization was followed inexorably by this one: Now I Can Die.

So there I am eating sushi in a graveyard on my birthday being sung to by frogs while vultures circle overhead against an enormous X which stretches across the sky...and I'm wearing the perfect outfit for just such an occasion. Talk about a mix-and-match mindfuck. Like remembering to always wear nice underwear, just in case. My mother would be so proud.