mendacity and raindrops

Liking Paul Newman was easy. While I wouldn’t have used today’s most apt words when I watched him as a kid, it hit me when I was just a bit older, watching the weekend line-up of old movies on Channel 11 or 30, that clearly, he was hot.

My mom thought so, too, and so we thought she was just getting a little carried away when she announced one night at dinner that she had seen Paul Newman out running across the Edgar Road bridge that morning. Boy, did that get some laughs. And then we read that the star had quietly accompanied his wife when she was at the Loretto-Hilton theatre just down the street that week. Imagine that. My brother spotted him years later at the Indy 500 time trials. Always a legend.

The way I remember it, I did a lot of stuff when I was a kid. But thinking back on it, I also remember telling my mom pretty often that I was incredibly bored. Now, my brother and I often figured out some creative solutions for this, building stuff with blocks and boxes, playing in the basement, just fooling around. But my parents were not of the whole-wheat-eating, NPR types like our neighbors… or like me, now. Nope. When we had run out all other options–or maybe a little before then–my family turned to one of the two televisions (color upstairs in later years/black and white in the basement) to fill our time.

It could be said that I have a lot to blame for those early days spent wasting my time on the box instead of burying myself in a book, translating Rilke, exploring Greek mythology or science or learning calculus. Instead, I remember a lot of theme songs and mindless trivia. But… those old movies, older than I am old, stick in my head. They were the gateway to an imagined adult world, pictures of humanity, sin, character, adventure.

I guess this is how I had images in my mind of women in fancy clothes, hats, gloves (my mom promised me it used to be that way, and beyond her own closet, the movies were proof). I guess this is how I had in my mind the image of a man, a handsome sort of man, strong through everything, but still trying to figure it all out. Maybe it skewed my expectations in some ways, gave a little too much credence to the Mars/Venus way of seeing things, but there were great stories. Great lines, too: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Lots of nice faces on the screen, I guess, Robert Redford a little younger when we saw Newman in Butch Cassidy and The Sting. But still, there was something about Newman, those blue eyes, that man with potential, the outlaw, the misunderstood guy drowning his fears in liquor, or the hero who doesn’t really want to be…

Paul Newman has passed now, as privately as he lived, it seems. I am guessing that you may wonder why, now, I write about this now, with so many other important things going on in the world, so many other topics that matter. Well, you know, really, maybe it is all the other economic crises and debates and the rain outside and all the realities that just make me a little sad, really, when they are lined up next to that announcement: oh yes, Paul Newman, my first movie star crush, is gone.

space

My first baby came home to a Victorian beauty, enormous and with all the hidden features that I had always dreamed of: nooks, crannies, window seats, pocket doors, clawfoot tubs… even a turret! This was the in-law-funded, mortgage-free future, the promise, the well-sought-after life, supposedly. Strangely, though, despite the beauty of the high-ceilinged first floor and its numerous fireplaces and abundant stained glass, we spent little time in those grand rooms.

Instead, we retreated to a small spot tucked behind the second-floor kitchen (there were indeed three kitchens in this house). The room was carpeted, remodeled more in the style of 1970s ranch than in 1890s Queen Anne. It was cozy, just right for nursing a newborn.

The room was not what I had expected to love in that old house, but we were quite content using only half a floor of the huge house; it was just what we needed. And that was part of the problem. We had the rest of the house to heat and maintain and repair. Too much.

It would seem that this chapter of our lives would have ended as we sold at a profit in the rising market and found the perfect apartment somewhere nearby, realizing the need for smaller and more reasonable. But the next chapter began with a bang. We made dramatic changes, headed to the snowy north, to bigger, better, more land, more horses, and I realized quickly that we really were mad, utterly mad.

A part of me still loves that little space of ours in Brookline–not the house, but that one small space that felt like ours, so close to the world, but so apart from it.

In recent months, I have found myself retreating from the world not by choice, but by necessity. The adult world I ached to rediscover has remained at bay despite all efforts, simply the realities of life and love. At first, I found enormous frustration in this, sadness at the lack of free time alone, me martyred caregiver. Martyrdom does not suit me, so after a while, the burden lifted. There was a space–a wonderful space–and I found it. Now, I crave that room of my own. It is far beyond the days of in-law funding, and certainly not mortgage-free, but this space, this life truly is mine.

My beloved attic, unfinished and private, sits above the streets and above my children. Wallpaper of various varieties covers the drywall in most places, but not all, and there is a mismatched floor. I have a fuzzy white rug on part of it, near stacks of clothing, an elliptical trainer, and a television that really sees most of its use only when I use the trainer. On the other side of the stairs is my office. I am here now, with my tea and my pens and ink, tacked up drawings of cards, letters in different styles, notebooks, words, music and rain. I am here now, a little closer to the clouds–and if I reach just a little, a little closer to the sublime.