The week started out in a bizarre fashion, as weeks can. I had what my mother would describe as a “white night,” which means little rest was enjoyed. My dogs were up and down with the calls of the coyotes and neighbor dogs, and I was up and down with them. My alarm went off as per usual at 6 a.m. “Oh hell no,” I yelled at it. As I endeavored to turn everything off, especially my phone, without the benefit of my glasses, a most peculiar thing happened. I dialed 911, which, later checking in earnest, is easy to do if you can’t see what you are doing.
“911. What is your emergency?” I hear, still not locating my glasses. Oh bother.
“Oh no, it’s a mistake, so sorry,” I say mortified and croaking with sleeplessness.
“You don’t have an emergency?” (Does the fact I can’t find my glasses constitute as an emergency? Likely not.)
“Oh no, so sorry, no emergency.” My daughter immediately calls me, as I am still looking for my glasses and feeling like I should be charged with wasting police time. “Mum, what is going on? You just dialed 911?” I did. Gawd. How did she know that? Little did I know she not only has my location saved in her phone, but also a notification that calls her if I dial emergency services. Well, phooey. “Sorry, dear,” I say. (She’s driving.) I text her a follow up apology and Siri barks back at me that I just called her again. I was now fully awake.
My glasses were found and I realized that I could not turn the emergency SOS signal off my phone. Every time I sent a text to anyone, my daughter got a call. If it hadn’t been so very annoying for her it would have been funny. I rush down to the phone shop as soon as they open and they are able to fix my problem in two seconds. And that was the beginning of the week. Hadn’t even cleared Monday morning at 6 a.m. and I was causing chaos throughout the world.
From there, it was time for some penance in the form of cleaning out boxes of stuff. I have come to realize that, when there is no more room in the house, us near-hoarders will just purchase some of those handy-dandy plastic hold-alls and find/build a place in the back-40 to store them. There are plastic boxes in the tack shed, the cat house, the VW parts storage … oh and at the top of the cat house if you dare go up there with the bats. Not to mention the garage and its curious corners full of who knows what.
I plunge head-first into a box full of sentimental memorabilia — photos, letters, the like. These are the toughest boxes to get through. What do you do with all those precious moments, frozen by time on crumbling photo paper, or precariously stuck into 1970’s photo albums? (“Oh, you just digitalize everything,” says my clever clogs friend.) I cannot imagine how many lifetimes it would take me to “just digitalize everything” and then where does this priceless cargo hang its head … up in the iCloud graveyard with all the other stuff no one will ever look at again? It’s a dilemma for our generation, I tell you.
I then had the genius idea of just putting my daughter’s name on the box for her to deal with later. Don’t tell her, but when they move to Montana, there will be several boxes marked “Francoise” which will likely sit in their storage or garage for quite some time. (Perhaps even as long as after my demise!) Then she will be mourning me, presumably, and looking for memories of my life and our lives together and she will find these wonderful boxes with her name on, full of heartfelt family treasure, and she will spend hours wading through and weeping and then she can just “digitalize everything,” or not. It will not be my problem anymore, unless I can watch her, giggling, from St. Elsewhere. So, there you have it — just pass the darn thing along to the next generation and move on. After that rather swift conclusion of what to do with all my boxes of memories, I plowed on. With this new-found genius idea in place, I was making rather swift work of my penance.
Then I find a manuscript. Not just any old manuscript, but my very first book. Oh no. The brakes go on. “Maquillage” is the title. (Means “make up” in French, not sure why.) It had been laboriously typed on my friend’s old word processor in London. During a spell when I was back in the U.K. from my home in Baton Rouge, La. (1991 to be precise), I had traveled back and forth to her house — via bus, I imagine, and used her then modern-day equipment to write my very first book, plus she then kindly printed it all out for me.
Bearing in mind these pages were well about 35 years old, they had been beautifully preserved in this English folder, waiting for someone to do something with it at some point in time decades down the road. I knew the story was based in Louisiana for the most part, but I could remember nothing more. It was likely childish gibberish — I was pretty foolish back then; but curiosity got the better of me and I began to read. “Gosh this isn’t bad,” I say to the interior of my brain. “It’s quite exciting! She leaves him and takes off. Does he follow her? Does she stay in New Orleans?” I found myself wondering what happened to Candide. Hilarious, since I was the one who created her in the first place.
So now I have a dilemma on my hands. Having said I wouldn’t be working on any books for a while, because I still had boxes of unsold inventory to deal with. (Can’t leave those for the next generation!) Could I perhaps re-work this timepiece for another era? (Full of telephones and paper — not a computer in sight!) Would anyone care if I did? I came up with a master plan. I would bequeath the entire manuscript to my good friend who is always itching to get her hands on my writing and edit the heck out of it. I would hand it over to her and say, alright, go for it. If anything comes of it, it will be a collaboration between us both.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Ummm, I have found another time-consuming project that is stopping me from clearing out these plastic boxes in front of me. Can you help?”
“Madame, you are being charged with wasting police time again!”
What a week it has been.
Columnist Lucy Jensen may be reached at lu*************@***il.com.
