What I remember more distinctly, however, is not even a memory of my own, but one of my sister’s, that has been told and retold so often now that it is part of the family lore. My mother was reading along, at some point in the story where Laura had already met Almanzo (Manly!), and poor Almanzo was suffering from some minor irritation. Oh, that man must have been driven to something awful in that chapter, because, as my mother read: “Almanzo swore.” The horror! Swearing! What I had not realized (because I could not READ) was that my mother had bowdlerized Ms. Wilder’s work. Almanzo had said something more! My sister, two years’ beyond me in reading, had noted the offending word as my mother skipped over it. And what could this horrible word be, a word unfit for six or even eight year-old ears?

“Almanzo swore: ‘Darn!’”.*

Oh my dear, I do believe I have the vapors! “Darn!”

We tease mother about this still (OB-viously), but it really is in keeping with her character – she never swears (she never even gossips!). Her sensibilities have certainly influenced her children (well, some more than others), and I do keep in mind this sort of wholesome way of interacting with the world, even 26 years later. But my mother, you ask, has she changed with the times?

Not so much, and it is one of the many things I love about her. Below is a card I received from her the other day, commiserating with me for the really disastrously horrible week I had last week:

“Well, shucks!” I love my mother so.

*I’ve only just now realized that our own memories of this event are themselves inaccurate. In Googling to get the punctuation right, I came across the actual text: “Almanzo swore: ‘Gol ding it!’”. So. Not “darn”. Oh, well – no sense changing my whole story for a “ding” rather than a “darn”.

Э thinks I do myself a disservice when I forget and artificially age myself. He gets caught up in anxieties about aging* (mostly because of a fear of death but also because of his very youth-focused profession). I, however, like aging. I mean, yeah, the incremental gaining of weight and the ever-diminishing quantity of baby-making years are not things that make me do cartwheels (not that I can cartwheel anyway). But, besides the obvious and very helpful “it’s better than being dead!”, I like aging because I feel like I become more myself with every year.

 I’ve always admired my Vati because he has always (from birth, seriously) been comfortable with himself. He’s a great storyteller, and his anecdotes bespeak a man who has always been who he is, and always been happy with that person. Kowtowing to peer pressure, disparaging others to get ahead, these are normal (if unsavory) social behaviors that are lost on him. He never saw the point, in middle school, of ragging on one’s parents. He asked the Mutlet out on a first date over the phone, apparently unconcerned that she might not exactly remember who he was. In med school, he confronted a powerful professor for making fun of a fellow student’s stutter. He has always been sure of himself and in abiding by his own compass and character.

Alas, this sureness of character (along with perfect eyesight) is an asset that didn’t get passed down the blood line  to me. Oh, believe me, like my father I’m something of a lovable (yes?) odd duck, but unlike him I’ve been an odd duck who cares what others think of her. This rather awkward combination has, from time to time, made life pretty uncomfortable between kindergarten, and, oh, say…age 31. Still, I get better in dealing with it, in being comfortable with being myself, year after year. I get better at holding myself above the fray of my own thoughts, get better at not comparing myself to others, get better at embracing my introverted, agoraphopic self. Get better at being more like my dad.

So bring it on, 32. Bring on the unrelenting march of years: the additional wrinkles, the aches and pains of my aging body, the diminishing baby-making era – it’s ok that I may now only have time to pop out maximum, oh, eight babies before menopause presumably sets in (don’t worry, I’ll probably stop at 2. or 3. or 4). In exchange I get to be more comfortable in my own skin; I get to embrace that part of me that’s ever more similar to a man I admire an awful lot. That’s worth more to me than a whole vat babies.

In honor of the blizzard, and the cabin fever that it engendered, I offer my list of activities if one is snowed in:

1. Read. A lot.

2. Cultivate your love affair with On Demand. Become quickly disenchanted. Nonetheless, contemplate watching Aladdin, since, you know, you haven’t actually watched it since 1990 or so.

3. Cross country ski. I loved this, if it weren’t for all the pesky cars, which insisted on driving on my ski paths, otherwise known as streets. I really need to live in the (snowy) country, to take advantage of skiing more often. Bliss.

4. Bake extraneous things. Because you can. Case in point: hazelnut pie. Kind of like pecan pie, but more, you know, hazelnutty. Feed to your husband, since you don’t have much of a sweet tooth.

5. Continue to go into work, as you live only four blocks away. Silently curse that you live only four blocks away, and irrationally dream of living in Rockville. Feel smug for being such a good worker bee.

6. Dig out your car, and silently (or not) curse the people that will inevitably take your spot tomorrow when hubby goes out to teach. Try to be philosophical about it and remember that shoveling is good exercise.

7. Have your reservations at top restaurants canceled. Seriously, Rasika, you couldn’t hack a tiny little blizzard? I was really looking forward to your palak chat. You’re dead to me. (Ok, not really. I love me some palak chat.) Still, I’m glad that Komi isn’t until next weekend.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got: 7. Blizzard of 2010, you really deserve so much more. Sorry. But I’ve got a sidecar waiting for me, and 30 Rock looming on the horizon. Until next time, with warmest snowiest wishes.

But it’s difficult to think of Bach as anything like me. We remember him, not as a man, exactly, but as a thriller of souls and a tester of digital dexterity. He is both more and less than the man who lived. We imbue him with holiness, or as a conduit to divinity; but, in so doing, we disregard the humanity essential to him, the humanity that is precisely the reason we revere him.

I think we do the same to great writers of the past: we see Jane Austen, Dorothy Sayers, P.G. Wodehouse et al. through the inimitable wit of their characters. But we do not see them as people. We imbue these past figures with a sort of inhumanity, in our acts of embalming them in the amber of their genius. Would they mind? Could we do it any other way?

And what of others from the past, those who held a closer sway on our hearts?

I was folding the laundry tonight and came to a dishcloth that my Grandmother had used. I’ve possessed said dishcloth for more than six months, using it happily and happily connecting it with my Grandmother. Tonight was the first time that my possession and use of it floored me, astounding me by the connection that it gave to her.  We were never particularly close, but I loved her, and I respected the life that she had led. I hoped in that moment of connection that she would be proud of me, for the woman I’ve become.

I suppose asking Bach et al. to be proud of me is a bit much; I hardly think of them as humans capable of that emotion. I hope, at the least, that they are not chagrined by my woman-handling of their works; at best, that their souls rejoice that they have allowed mine to revel in divinity.

[*Name that tune!]

Love: Seeing so many old friends over the past week!

Hate: All this social interaction is exhausting. I really just want to snuggle in with Э and watch the next few episodes of Battlestar.

Love: I’m being drafted to work on more pro bono projects at work – hooray, assignments that actually make use of my legal knowledge!

Hate: I haven’t submitted a new job application since…August? I think? I have totally lost my searching for a job mojo.

Love: Just requested time off for the ENTIRE WEEK of Thanksgiving, to go visit my lovely sisters in SC.

Hate: Being nervous about having my leave request denied, even though I have plenty of vacation/personal time to use. HR can be tyrannical sometimes.

Love: Contemplating a new home in DC (two bedrooms even), and the decorating possibilities that home ownership presents. (Recently I’ve been raring to go shopping….for shoes? Clothes? Nope. New throw pillows for the couch. I am officially an adult.)

Hate: The astronomically high price of housing in DC – Half a million for a two bedroom condo? What a steal!

Love: That I’m blogging more often, and that people outside my immediate family seem to be reading this lovingly crafted tripe.

Love: Would love it if you would leave a comment with your own loves and hates for the day!

But wait! I can even paste in this important looking HTML ribbon attesting to my superiority! Except that I already deleted the comment with the link in it. Alas.

And I’m not exactly a marriage blog, am I? I mean, I have mentioned my husband here often (in every post, I think – sorry to those of you who are marriage-averse), but I’m not a marriage blog per se, am I? There’s more that’s interesting about me than as a man’s wife, isn’t there? I’m not just some human chattel, am I? I have a personality distinct from my marital duties, right? 

Oh yes, I forgot! I’m a Daily Reviewer-recognized blogger.

Thank goodness. My ego can sail through another day intact.

The donating process itself was never very difficult for me – I think the worst part was waking up at oh-god-thirty and hauling myself to outside-of-the-beltway Virginia for the appointments. The shots were never more painful than a sharp prick (the needles used are similar to those used by diabetics), and the operation itself was always something I almost perversely looked forward to: a forced nap? Who would say no to that? (Excepting recalcitrant toddlers, I suppose.)

Before I was cleared to donate the first time, I had to undergo a psychological evaluation, basically along the lines of: “You know what you’re getting yourself into here, right?” I did. These children will not be mine, are not mine, even though they get their genetic material from me. You don’t have to worry about me ransacking the fertility clinic’s files in the dead of night to track down my biological progeny. I think my biggest fear with the endeavor is that my future children (with my husband) would meet their biological half-siblings someday, unwittingly fall in love, and then be made to suffer through the awful realization of their relatedness. Fairly unlikely, I know.

I was and am so glad to have been of service to these parents who so desperately wanted children, and yet I can’t help feeling a little morally ambiguous about some aspects of egg donation: selective reduction, for example, the process by which a pregnancy of multiples is winnowed down to one of twins. I perfectly understand the benefits of a more manageable pregnancy, coupled with the increased chance for viability of those fetuses which remain; all the same, selective reduction is just another word for abortion. Also, sometimes I can’t help but think that my willingness to donate my eggs directly contravenes my pro-adoption stance. If parents are able to get a child from me, that means that they won’t adopt an already existing child in need. Even now that my role as egg donor is over, I still find myself unable to square these questions in my mind.

One direct benefit of egg donation, however, was the quality stamp I received on my own ability to reproduce. My eggs are VIABLE, gosh darn it! And my uterus looks pretty darn good, too! That has definitely been a mote of comfort to me, since most people don’t know if they’re reproductively healthy until after they’ve started trying for their first little chicklet. Still, if my dear reproductive system decides to start acting up once Э and I start trying for ourselves, I think I’ll be more than a little perturbed. You hear that, body? Be good, or else I will cut you. Or just lament your failings in my blog. You know, either one.

I subsequently made acquaintance, and then friends, with a number of people who had lived a few years in NYC. “How lush, how modern, how brave!” I would think, upon learning of their lives in the city. “One day” , I would think for myself.

My second time in NYC was the early fall of 2005, with my then fiance/now husband. We trained up from DC so that I could meet his mother, see the landscape and apartment that housed and nurtured him to adulthood. We drank vodka at the Russian Samovar, meandered through Central Park (not sequentially – no drunken bucolic strolls for this girl). My thoughts of the city still ran the glamorous track, and I still dreamed of moving to the megalopolis one day.

And then I went back, and back, and back again. And I realized that I HATED this city. I hate the smugness of its inhabitants, and their rudeness. I hate the crowds of humanity, I hate the expense of life and the pseudo-intellectualism of its hip denizens.  I hate the garbage that trails through the streets, I hate the streets that feel like canyons, I hate the lack of a horizon. I hate New York.

We were back again this weekend, much to my chagrin. My plan, as always, was to hole up in my mother-in-law’s apartment until we could climb in the car and fight through traffic to finally, exhaustedly reach home in DC again. Instead, we braved the city. We took a watertaxi around the southern tip of the island, we supped in Little Italy, and we trekked out to Brighton Beach for pelmeni and windblown views of the water. And you know what?

I didn’t hate it.

Oh, sure, I still hate the things that I said I hated before (and I really do hate them – this is no mere emotion of irritation or exasperation). But I realized that New York has a really delightful niche, and if you can suffer through all the hate-worthy things in the city, you can appreciate its quintessential New Yorky-ness.

New York is an overgrown port town and a cauldron for probably more cultures than even exist in the world (said cultures inevitably cross-breed when they stew in NY). New York seems to nurture all that is dirty, smelly, and rude. But these are not its essential characteristics, just byproducts of its megalopolisity.  The Platonic ideal of New York, and what I was able to glimpse this weekend, constitutes water, inimitable skylines, and effervescent ethnic traditions.

All of which, in my opinion, are quite far from drawing my ire.

So, I guess I don’t hate New York. But I still never want to live there.

Still, back I am, if but for possibly only one blogpost more before I disappear into the ether for another 6 months or so. But really, it’s amazing how little has happened in the past six months, for my little corner of the world at least. I’m still a non-home owning, non-childed, married misfit in the city. And I still have my old demons. That being said, I think I may have figured out the root cause of said demons: I really suck at being an adult.

Sure, I get to decide when I go to bed at night, and what to have for dinner, and whether I want to take that vacation to Russia or to Italy. BUT. I also have to pay for that bed (and the roof under which it sits), and put the effort into making dinner (ok, nevermind, that’s totally not true. Hubby dearest does all the grocery shopping and all the cooking. He is my very own 1950′s housewife), but I DO have to pay for that vacation, and make sure I’ve got all my ducks in a row vis-a-vis passports and vacation time from work, etc. On top of which I have the altogether wholly unappealing tasks of paying taxes, paying bills, and being cognizant enough that the whole world could go up in a flaming Mad-Max apocalypse at any moment. Fun!

So. That’s where I stand: sucking at being an adult, but stuck being one. Anyone want to be my Pollyanna and play the glad game?

For example, have you noticed this is only my second blog post since this experiment started? I am either lazy (yes) or paralyzed by the fear of writing something subpar (also yes) or suprisingly put-off by the whole nature of blogging. Yes, blogging itself.  You don’t realize until you’ve lovingly typed your own witticisms and shepherded them into the ether that blogging must be, for most, a singularly unrewarding medium. At least I knew, when I wrote my college essays (the night before they were due), that they would be read by someone - albeit most likely a cranky, over-worked, professorial someone – but at least I would know that what I had slaved over for, say, five hours or so would be mentally consumed.

Did you (and by you, I mean, presumably, me, and maybe my husband, when I make him read this post so that this sparkling wit will have some outlet besides my own mind, and so that I am calmed by the thought that I am not merely an auto-avatar)….anywho, did you ever keep a diary as a kid, growing up? And when you did, did you imagine that, well, ok, I’m writing this to be spiritually whole and in tune with my chakras and all that, but really, I’m writing this to all those people in the future who will discover these “inmost thoughts” and immediately establish the temple of Countrymouse (or, you know, whoever you happen to be) because of how philosophically enlightening your mullings on the nature of life, the universe, and everything are (via the perspective of a seventh grade beanpole)? Because that’s how fabulous you were at the age of 8, 11, or 18? Not that I thought that at all, of course.

But if I had thought such things, I think I still do. And, thus, this blog is just my “howdy” to the future, even though presumably no one here in 2009 (wait, is it 2009 already? According to my diary, I’m supposed to already be a movie star/philosopher/island owner) really seems to care? Let’s hope so. I could really do with having my very own effigy at some point. Even if I do happen to be dead at the time.