Beatnik to neatnik




 

 

My mother was German. Achtung.
Inclined to regimen and devoted to routine, dinner was served promptly at 5:30 p.m., beds were made with Euclidean square corners, Dad’s handkerchiefs were ironed to precise, geometric specifications and we always drank beer with lunch.

We didn’t have any alcoholics in the family but a lot of people with bad breath. Wearing immaculately clean, starched clothing, of course. You can’t have everything.

For years, I fought it. The order, not the beer. If it couldn’t be stacked or lined up, it was tossed. In the trash. I was afraid I’d find myself there one day.

Dad said I hung up my clothes under my bed. And I did. He said my feet were firmly planted in midair. And they were. In my bedroom painted with blue butterflies and plump fairies overserved on imaginary petit fours, I danced the Charleston to Knuckles O’Toole, sketched Snoopy look-alikes to The Beatles soundtrack, twisted to Chubby Checker, snuck Oreos when Mom practiced Chopin études, daydreamed from here to eternity and, as my father said, lived like a beatnik.

On the door, Mom plastered a sign that said, “Kirby’s Dump.” Oh, how I detested that sign. This was not a dump—it was a veritable inferno of invention and utter feminine liveliness. Harumph. In the words of Erma Bombeck, I believed if it doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares, why should I?

When Mom passed on to that great couturier row in the sky, she must have ordered St. Peter to transfer all of her obsessive neatness— along with her taste for Ferragamos—into my disorderly brain. I wish she had sent her ability to knock off a Rachmaninoff prelude, but I guess you can’t have everything.

It took a while to happen, but it did. Like being bashed on the head by Mr. Clean’s scrub brush.

One disorderly day, I awoke and quickly made my bed. Lined the slippers up in my closet. Jumped into the shower and made sure every towel was folded carefully in thirds and draped over the rack so that the ends were perfectly even. No soap scum in the dish, no watermarks on the glass, no toothpaste in the basin. No. No. No. Left the house without a dish in the sink, singing happily, “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s clean up time, you know.”

Scary, isn’t it? Funny, as an old broad with just Grumps and me carousing around the joint, I now realize the value of those routines. That order. That beer at noon. Just kidding. As much as I couldn’t understand why my tennis racket could only go on that
hook, I get it . . . at last. Point, set, match.

So in early November, I made an orderly plan for Christmas day and enacted it like Rommel directing the Panzers.

I stocked up on artichokes at Gelson’s for my Christmas Eve ohso-wonderful-pain-in-the-derriere soup, made the base and froze it next to the cranberry daiquiris and peppermint ice cream.

I set the table on the first day of Christmas and told the partridge hanging out in the pear tree to stay out of the dining room. To discourage the dust from gathering, I hit it with the leaf blower a few times. By the 12th day, I lost a few crystals off the chandelier, but what the heck. And get this . . . my potatoes were stuffed in advance, my soufflés prepped, my home enraptured by holiday spirit.

On the 12th day of Christmas I was ready. I sent the lords-a-leapin’.

And I have never been so exhausted in my entire life. In the dead-bug position on my couch singing, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la.

Okay, take a breath, you old broad, take a breath, I said to myself. A little orderly dining perhaps? A little pasta at Piatti, a little vino at Rustico, a little latte at Coffee Bean, a little chopped salad from CPK and I’ll be okay. Oh, and a croissant from Vienna Bakery and one more of their chocolate éclairs and I’ll be ready. Rallye you old poop, rallye.

So . . . on to 2010. Éclairs and croissants consumed, followed by a redemptive visit to Lassen’s for gingko and oil of get-your-butt-ingear juice, I readied the wardrobe for the new year, cleaned out the drawers, lined ’em up, stacked ’em up, threw ’em out.

Santa, the elves and the rambunctious reindeer have been socked away for another season to schmooze with the Easter bunny, the party animal Pilgrims, the stoic Uncle Sam and the not-so-Great Pumpkin.

I am in the groove. Well almost. Some wrapping paper remnants are taunting me in my office, but I’m threatening them with expulsion.

I have a sign on my computer that says, “Freedom is the great arsenal of democracy” and though FDR had the right idea, Freedom is the Result of Orderliness.

I have another sign on my desk that says, “’Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt” and that’s the subject of another essay.

Maybe it’s time for lunch. A very happy and groovy New Year to all!

You can reach Elizabeth Kirby
at kirby@theacorn.com.


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