The Reader Travels

The first time I walked into my house, it was filled full with someone else’s stuff. The couple who lived here had remained childless and were nearing retirement age. The wife’s mother had lived here with them until she died, and they were alone again, ready to downsize, put everything into storage and move into a one-bedroom apartment.

They had two households full of stuff crammed under this roof, theirs and mother’s, rows of big gray filing cabinets junking up the space that would become my green room, and an unhealthy obsession with big framed mirrors that covered every wall, reflecting and magnifying the wretchedness of all the stuff. It was a house of great energy, choked in Feng Sh*t.

Back on the road with Anne Tyler, Earthly Possessions is a novel about a woman so burdened by all the stuff in her life, she doesn’t so much mind it when she gets kidnapped by a bank robber and heads out with him on a grand road trip to Florida. Like the people I bought my house from, Charlotte Emory lives in a house with two households worth of crap. She’s stifled, trying to climb over furniture and photographs, in search of some tiny space for her self.

I love Tyler’s description of the state of Charlotte Emory’s house and her life before she was freed at gunpoint. If I wanted to leave it all, I’m glad to say I wouldn’t have nearly as many possessions to weigh me down. Of course, it also means I’m not as desperate to get out.

A few weeks ago, vacationing in Dallas, we had this urge to just sell all our stuff, including the house, and buy an RV to take our life on the road. We’d be untethered and free to go meet new people, see new things, visit family and friends we don’t have time to visit with our crazy busy lives. I’d join my man in the freelance writing profession, and we’d have all we needed — shelter, food, adventure and love. Problem is, I still love my house and my job, and yes, my stuff.

I remembered what George Carlin had to say about “stuff” back in the 80s before the politics became so unbearable in his comic routines. If we ever did this, we’d just have to reduce the size of our stuff and move on down the road.

When the postcard came in the mail with the word, “Islam,” in huge print, I was intrigued. The local Islamic center was holding an open house to invite non-believers to learn more about their faith. It was an outreach program designed to dispel myths and open up conversations with a predominantly Christian community.

If it was any one of the Christian churches that does recruiting events like this, I wouldn’t go. Of course, their postcards and flyers are often on the preachy side, which is a big turn-off. But going to the Islamic center was kinda like going to one of those free time-share weekends knowing full well you weren’t going to buy a time share. We were just in it for the adventure.

But now that I’ve been, I have a strange urge to go back. I’m still the time-share lurker, but I feel like I didn’t get enough face time with the women. I felt like I walked in there with an open mind, but I didn’t engage any of the women in conversation because of some inexplicable reserve. I don’t want to ask any of them if they like sex or anything. It’s disrespectful, and I already know the answer. Most do, some don’t. It’s a universal truth that unites us all, right?

What I did learn is that women wear a hijab to cover their hair out of some expression of modesty and piety. It’s a personal choice that marks them as Muslim like crosses around the neck and those little Jesus fishes on the backs of people’s cars will mark them as Christian. I still don’t know why modesty and piety are important or what they really mean, but the women gave me a lovely hijab of my own when I was there.

Somehow I feel that I would wear it in the comfort of my own home but not out in public. I know, it’s the opposite of what I would do if I were Muslim. I can pretend in the bedroom, but out in the world, I am who I am. Unless it’s halloween, and then it’s all fair game if some famous Muslim chick dies.

(Note that the picture is not me. It’s a model.)

The story in Breathing Lessons centers around a day trip to an old high school friend’s funeral. The couple taking the trip isn’t all that old, but the wife is having some major empty nest issues. That same weekend, she would be saying good-bye to her daughter, who was heading out for college. And driving out for her best friend’s husband’s funeral wasn’t making her feel any younger.

The older we get, the more we find ourselves attending funerals. Funerals for grandparents give way to funerals for parents, and when your spouses and friends start dropping, it just goes downhill from there. I’m at the age where it’s the parents who are going. Three friends at work lost their fathers this summer, including one of my best friends who flew home to China to be with her father in his final days.

Around the time I read Breathing Lessons, I was taking a road trip to a funeral myself. My husband’s uncle had passed, a year and a half after we watched my father-in-law die. I found myself singing again, standing in front of a church full of people who would truly miss Bob, standing in front of his wife and his daughter who thanked me with their eyes and their tears. I took a deep breath, and I sang, so much more for the breathing than for the dead.