Today is a Nine

Sundays have always been special days in our family.  When my siblings and I were quite young, our family began a tradition of having donuts after church.  As kids we ate them while reading the Sunday comics and drinking milk.  Over the years details about this tradition have changed -- where we bought the donuts, whether we drank milk or tea or coffee -- but the tradition itself remains.  I think it is not an unusual practice, given how often the donuts we particularly liked were sold out by the time Dad would get to the counter.  I remember that initially our donuts came from a bakery that was located just west of the university campus.  This bakery specialized in making maple bars that were (I think) a foot long and shaped like feet.  I loved that!  I could rarely finish one, but I gave it a valiant effort (now the thought of eating something foot-shaped seems.... gross).  When this bakery closed, we began frequenting the bakery at Super One, and our particular favorite was the half chocolate, half maple bar. I also enjoyed one donut that had white frosting with strawberry and lemon jam in stripes on top of the frosting with shredded coconut on top of that.  Just thinking about it puts me into a diabetic coma.

But, contrary to what the first paragraph suggests, this blog is not about sweets.  All of the above was simply to introduce the topic(s) of this posting.  This past Sunday, my parents and I (yes, I am one of those spinsters -- I hate that word -- who socializes mainly with her parents) were sitting round the dining room table after church eating cinnamon rolls (shake things up a bit) and perusing the Sunday Seattle Times.  I made my way through the comics, Parade, the Seattle Times' insert/magazine The Pacific Northwest, the travel section, the arts section, the front page (mostly reading headlines and looking at pictures).  I had tossed aside the sports' section and the business section as well as the classified section, when I happened across the horoscopes (which must have been in a section I had previously skimmed but had missed).  I'm not much of a horoscope person, but once in a while I read them.  My horoscope on this particular Sunday read, "Today is a nine."  It said more than that, but I don't remember specific details.  Probably something about embracing opportunities and meeting new people, neither of which is an area of strength for me.

Interestingly, Sunday was probably pretty close to a nine.  I had no obligations in the afternoon.  I read or watched t.v. (why is there a period after both t and v when television is one word?) or chatted with friends.  In the evening I made a foray into the world of socializing but was home in time for Downton Abbey. In many ways Sunday was much like any other day off.  And it occurs to me that maybe this isn't what is meant by a "nine" type of day.

All those months ago when I started this blog, I mentioned that I had made an attempt at starting it the previous year.  The blog was intended to be a way for me to lay claim to more "nine" days.  My great and glowing hope was that it would motivate me beyond my current, rather staid, situation in life. To some extant, it has.  There are great plans underway, but I am gravely concerned that they will remain only plans.  The real issue, as I'm sure I've pointed out before, is my own lack of discipline, my frightening inability to care where I am or what I'm doing.  Then, once in while, I'm given bursts of panic about my life, sudden rocket-glaring realization that I cannot always be here.  I find it infinitely important that I try (at least) to make some forward movement in those moments.

Referring to my previous blog attempt was not pointless.  In fact, my plan throughout all of this rambling has been to illuminate one small but important feature of this blog -- its title.  My favorite book  is, and has been for some time now, Howards End by E.M. Forster.  It is a beautifully written novel which deals with the idea of spiritual heirs and connectedness, upper class and lower class, imperialists and idealists.  I studied it and wrote about it as a graduate student for a portion of my ill-fated thesis, and, though not one person may ever know my astounding theories on this astounding book, I still find myself drawn to its timeless narrative.  I say timeless because so many of the issues dealt with continue to be relevant. I won't go into detail; it wouldn't be as good as the real thing.

As I began to type that first, and now long-lost, post, I turned to Howards End for inspiration.  I don't remember exactly what I wrote.  Perhaps it was about connecting with our fellow human beings; perhaps I tackled the effects of education on class or Edwardian gender issues. Perhaps I did nothing more than quote my favorite passages.  But, ultimately, I came upon a portion of narration of which I had taken little note previously.

Margaret Schlegel, who was meant to inherit the house Howards End, is taken there by the widower Henry Wilcox.  Wilcox knows his wife left the house to Miss Schlegel in a last minute, hand-written missive before dying, but Wilcox supersedes his wife's wishes, burns the note, and leaves Miss Schlegel none the wiser. As Miss Schlegel makes her way through the house, she looks at the ancient wych-elm tree in the front yard and contemplates its relationship to the house.  The narrator writes, "It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; ... It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent. ... House and tree transcended any similes of sex. ... [T]o compare either to man, to woman, always dwarfed the vision."

The point is that Miss Schlegel understands the house in the same way that Mrs. Wilcox did and in which Mr. Wilcox never will.  As Margaret is being shown the house, Mr. Wilcox talks about nothing more than remodeling the house, telling her in a "monologue" the "use and dimensions of the various rooms," all in terms which indicate to readers that the house is not really his, much as he would like to think so. The tree is a symbol of England and tradition.  Often elms were associated with death in England, but the leaves were also used to feed livestock.  In Germany, the tree was seen as a gateway between this world and the spirit world.  The fact that Henry Wilcox does not see it for its tradition, even for its Englishness (Forster asserts that the house "was English, and the wych-elm tree ... an English tree"), suggests his own rootlessness;  the fact that Margaret Schlegel sees its tradition and resists assigning it, and the house, a gender in order to avoid dwarfing her vision of the two suggests her own inevitable permanence there.

Often we are victims of the "Henry Wilcox" myopia.  We look at our lives and our world in compartmentalized boxes and see just what is nearest.  We have deadlines and to-do lists.  We want to earn a certain amount of money by a certain age. Own a house; get on the ladder.  We blast forward with our lives, leaving our traditions behind.   All of these plans would indicate some thought, at least, for the future, but if something happens to a person's finances, to the housing market, to any of these mortal, transitory concerns, what is left?  Wilcox, at the end of the book, having lost his wealth, is left a weakened man, so sickly that he needs looking after.

The "Seanse Ducken" myopia isn't much better.  I may not be worrying about housing markets or Wall Street, but my vision is certainly fixed on the here and now, on what I feel like doing, on what floats my boat this instant.  If I feel disinclined to apply for graduate schools or to look for jobs with benefits because Netflix instant play is calling my name, how am I any better than the Henry Wilcoxes of the world?  It's far more likely that I'm worse.  So, a full month after New Years', I have settled on a resolution. I resolve to create more "nine" days.  Or perhaps more accurately, to redefine them.