Treatise on Beauty

In my younger years, I kowtowed to all the fashion do’s and don’t’s. But I no longer shrink in shame when someone says, “you look your age.” I’m celebrating midlife by cutting my ties to Maybelline, by letting loose my folds & frills, by cultivating the wisdom that comes with age if we invite it in, and by shifting my thinking about “beauty” toward a higher ideal of healthy radiance and sound character. What am I giving up in my unwillingness to drag myself, panting, after youth?

Skin Care & Makeup. Some women (and probably men too) will plop down $50 for anti-aging anything-in-a-jar, though these “miracles” are most likely common kitchen ingredients like olive oil and parsley. Foundation makeup is really just highly refined spackling or drywall compound, isn’t it girls? If properly applied, preferably with a trowel, one can no longer detect holes, pockmarks, dents and seams. Makeup in general is really just carnival face-painting for Big Girls. And some Big Boys, although most men have the good sense to see through the ruse. If I had the nerve, my preferred method of applying makeup would be a la Pris in Blade Runner—one pass with a can of black spray paint.

High Heels. They were invented (by a man) to keep medieval riders’ (men) boots from slipping out of their stirrups. But why they’re now tilting the pelvic bones, throwing out the spinal alignment, blistering, bunioning & binding the feet of women worldwide, is beyond me. Perhaps with the invention of OB/GYN stirrups (I’ll bet it was a man), someone (probably a man) thought, “Hey! I know what would help these little ladies…” The only other explanation I can come up with is that men secretly want to date upright-walking [insert hoofed animal here]. Seriously, there must be a video of a goat, walking upright and possibly dressed in sequins, on YouTube. Compare this to any video of a runway model in 4” stilettos, and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Flicka—stamp once for YES, twice for MAYBE.

Diets. I understand the health issues associated with obesity and want to avoid these pitfalls. I don’t want to develop the shuffling walk that signals painful joints buckling under too much weight. But if I’m in good health and reasonably active, don’t even think about bringing up BMI. I’ve been a human laboratory for Atkins, Pritikin, Weight Watchers, South Beach, cabbage, Fit for Life, and countless other experiments in depravity, starvation, obsessive selection, and restriction. I’ve worked constantly against my body’s own desire to maintain a certain voluptuous, healthy weight, albeit contrary to the medical charts. But I’m tired of thinking constantly about what goes into my mouth, when we should all be thinking more about what comes out. I’m not falling for the “protruding pointy-boned waif” model of beauty any more. I’m in the fluff-is-fundamental camp. The curves-are-commendable camp. The camp that has Moon Pies and 1% milk ‘round the campfire.

Spanx. This may be the one legitimately lifesaving fashion accessory. It’s not that we want an impossible, unhealthy hourglass figure; we just want our Spanx to contain and steady us, so we aren’t yanked hither & yon by the momentum of unbound curvaceousness. And so we can slide into that blue beaded sheath dress.

Bad Hair Days. Let’s heat an iron rod in the fire, then get it as close to our eyes as possible without actually burning flesh, so we can make these dead protein cells curl. Cool. Better yet, let’s soak our entire heads (and possibly our brains) in toxic chemicals that alter the color and kink the dead cells, THEN let’s torch them with the iron rod. I currently have long red hair. I’ve buckled under peer pressure to cover the few newly emerging white hairs with henna, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I alternate between a messy ponytail, braided pigtails (yes, even at my age), and the occasional crew cut I get in moments of extreme hair exasperation. I understand and occasionally adopt the military haircut, the nun’s concealing wimple, voluntary baldness.

Shaving. Come ON. Really? I don’t know first-hand, but I hear that even men are shaving now. Apparently, hairless is in. It creeps me out a little when they say it’s “sexy”—doesn’t that suggest an attraction to prepubescent children? I think it would be smarter, if we really want to lose the fur (and I’m not sure that’s such a good idea for South Dakota prairie folk), if only people who are naturally hairless through genetic mutation were allowed to breed for the next few generations, until we’re all born smooth as silk. Like the Sphynx cat, or the Chinese Crested dog with just a little floof on top. Then we can get to work on regrowing our vestigial tails.

Wonder/Miracle Bras. Here’s a scoop: we live on a planet with gravity, and gravity pulls everything down toward the earth. Even breasts. There’s something absurd about trying to holster & barricade the girls, keeping them shoved up into our collarbones and tethered to our shoulders against the perpetual force of gravity. And again, isn’t it just a little creepy that our definition of beauty drives us to cut, mold, carve & reduce our own mammary glands to simulate the barely-there bumps of puberty? Let’s go back to “Reubenesque” as a model of beauty. Let’s embrace & reward the inevitable drop—another ounce of respect for each ¼” of descent.

There’s something ultimately liberating about giving up on the popular definition of beauty. I’m not driven (mad) to be the goddess of seduction any more. I want to be the goddess who can turn your pig into a toadstool if you make my children or grandchildren cry. And with the time & money I’ll save, I'll stock my cooler with Belgian beer and Moon Pies, don my comfy flannel shirt and sweatpants, and trek off for some backwoods camping with the coyotes who, unimpressed by taut skin and perky breasts, will sing me to peaceful, unfettered, cronish sleep.

Deep-Freeze Delerium

• Nothing on your shopping or to-do list is worth the white-knuckle, whiteout ice-crawl to town.
• If you’re snowed in long enough, you will uncoil, welcome silence, lose your fear of self-reflection.
• Pearl Bailey was right to call the kitchen “a mystical place, a temple.”
• Knitting is meditation for people still plagued by their grandma’s [insert Christian denomination] warning: “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”
• Blooming oncidium orchids are clear proof of alien colonization on Earth.
• We will rail against the other woman/man until we become her/him.
• Gordon Hempton makes the finest environmental/nature sounds CD’s on the planet. You crank the six house speakers and fill your home with babbling brook, wolf calls, and summer thunderstorm.
• If you complain loud enough, your dear, concerned friends will start emailing you photos of blooming spring flowers, wild flamingos, green summer meadows. You are grateful and make a screensaver slide show of only warm, brightly colored things.
• Spectral Super Bunny makes ghostly appearances here & there, briefly, atop the snow drifts in your yard. He has a head the size of pit bull and taunts you with his mystical ability to vanish.
• Peacocks will eat leftover brown rice, onions, and garlic, cooked in hot salsa. But if you serve it on a metal cookie sheet, it will take them an hour or two of posturing and clucking and dancing around to make sure the cookie sheet won’t eat them first.
• The bleakness of a blizzard is humbling, awe-inspiring, or devastating in direct proportion to the affection you feel for the land and the amount of Doritos and Ethiopian coffee beans you have on hand.
• You find out your CD of the Dalai Lama and his entourage chanting for Vaclav Havel is actually Dutch mantra singer Hein Braat. You’ve been the victim of a viral Internet urban legend. You block out the new information and pretend it’s the Dalai Lama.
• If you practice owl calls on your back porch late at night, the owls will eventually start to answer, and you will shiver every time.
• Winter is a necessary step before spring. Spring. Before long, blue crocus and purple hyacinth will peek through the snow. And that’s why you live in South Dakota. Even in the winter.

Creepy Guy Sets Me Straight

In the summer of 1975, when I was but a teen, my friend Steve and I were on our way to a YES concert in Lincoln, NE. We came upon a motorcycle accident on O Street. The bike was lying in the right-hand driver’s lane, and the driver, a young man in his early 20’s maybe, was lying half in the street and half up the curb. I muscled my way into the crowd, nosy thing that I am and aspiring Florence Nightengale (I was still planning on a nursing career at that point). The kid was unconscious, lying on his back, and his shoulder-length dark hair was matted against the sidewalk in a small pool of blood. He gurgled and rasped, and I could see blood in his mouth rising up and going back in with every breath. I yelled for someone to call the ambulance (pre-911/cell phone days), but no one moved. I yelled again, and finally, someone went in the O Street Motel to call.

Meanwhile, a crowd of 20-30 people had gathered but kept a very cautious distance from the kid. No one would touch him. So (and here’s the part that makes people wince), I did two things: (1) I took off my poncho, balled it up, and put it gently under his feet; somewhere in my Dr. Kildare/General Hospital viewing I had heard about elevating feet to prevent shock. And (2) I gently, slowly, tilted his head slightly to the side so the blood would run out, not back in, and wiped out his mouth out with my sweater.

This is the clearest memory of the incident for me: A man leaned over my shoulder as I knelt beside the kid, and he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Give it up. The guy’s dead, man.” My teen blood boiled. I gave Creepy Guy a pointy elbow-jab, held the kid’s limp hand, got down in his face, and semi-shouted one long run-on sentence until the ambulance showed up: “You’re not dead I’m right here with you I’ll stay here until the ambulance comes stay with me you’ll be okay help is on its way that’s my hand you’re feeling don’t let go…” The ambulance came, I left my poncho behind, and Steve and I went on to the concert.

I never found out if the kid lived or died. I never knew his name. I didn’t wait around to give my contact info to the ambulance guys. I didn’t try checking the papers, calling the hospitals, or digging for police reports until a few years ago, and by then it was too late; any records going back that far are long gone.

Part of me knows that I didn’t follow up because I knew even then, while I was gingerly moving that kid, that I could have been hastening him to his death. Still, I believed then, and I believe today, that it’s ALWAYS better to do something, to care enough to act—even if that action is bungling, inept, inadequate, wrong—than to do NOTHING. I tried; I hooked up my will and human compassion to that unconscious kid like a mountaineer’s rope, and I held on, dammit.

I tell this story now because I had a sudden insight into Creepy Guy’s outburst when the news of the Haiti quake broke: Bystanders feel powerless in the face of disaster. We don’t know what to do, we can’t imagine anything powerful enough to fix the damage, so we do nothing. We’re forced to confront our own weak puniness in the face of problems that seem overwhelming. So I privately thanked Creepy Guy for teaching me this lesson, and I did something. I gave a few bucks to Helping Hands for Haiti. I gave a bit to Doctors Without Borders. I gave some to the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, left without water & power in this brutal cold after a recent ice storm.

I don't think I’m fixing anything, and I'll bet there are a bazillion other overwhelming problems I haven’t even thought about. But I'm shaking up and embracing my inner Good Samaritan. I’m holding on to my belief that the smallest acts of kindness work together to keep in motion an amazing tidalwave of human energy and compassion. And I'm doing what I can because I know only this for sure: It’s better to do something—anything—than to do nothing.

All Dressed in White

The arctic deepfreeze finally let up here at the Row, and we’ve been getting out & about in the balmy 20- or 30-degree days, inching our way back to normal. There are mountains of snow everywhere, with ribbons carved out of gravel roads and county highways just wide enough for cars to pass. School started last Wednesday, and driving into Little Town in the early morning is like crossing the tundra. The scene is breathtaking in its stark black & white contrast, with vast empty pasture & fields blown into oceanscapes of snow tides frozen mid-wave. Dense overnight fog gives us mornings flocked in fuzzy white hoarfrost, quite a spectacle if you’ve never seen it. A couple of mornings, as if it all wasn’t stunning enough, I drove to town in heavy swirling fog; I’m pretty sure Merlin was thumbing a ride on the Greenfield Road.

The recent deepfreeze forced us to conjure prairie ingenuity and took me back to my 70’s Earth Mother roots. I made oat bread and parmesan-caper bread, thick Greek-style yogurt, and a splendid granola with 5 grains and 5 kinds of dried fruit. When Mom and I were in the Yucatan last summer, the pretty Italian boys who ran Posada Margherita in Tulum served us breakfasts of Greek yogurt topped with homemade granola and fresh fruit. So Ray and I have been living lately on yogurt, granola and blueberries for breakfast, and hearty soups and parmie caper bread for dinner. Wonderful, though quite different from breakfast under a thatched palapa with the Caribbean surf as a backdrop.

Winter tragedy found its way to the Row yesterday. Returning home from a day of shopping in Sioux City, Ray and I were stopped on our road by two hunters in a pickup, letting us know that “someone” had run over three of our peacocks just in front of our house. Maybe these two hunters were the culprits, we’ll never know, but we do know the peas have gotten far too comfortable with traffic. The snow is so deep here that the peas spend a lot of time walking single-file up and down the plowed drive and road—the only open spaces they can navigate right now—and they like to spend sunny afternoons on the narrow plowed road, scratching for gravel and spilled corn. They recognize my van, Mini Pearl, and are often reluctant to budge when I drive in or out of the yard. So it wasn’t surprising that someone barreling down our road might have come suddenly on too-tame, stubborn peacocks, but it was very sad to see the carnage. And now we are 17. This is probably still enough peacocks to qualify me as a Crazy Peacock Woman (one peahen, desperate last week to beat her flockmates to the corn bucket, actually flew up and tried to land on my head), but we’ll have to do some serious horn-honking, shrieking, get-out-of-way-NOW car conditioning lest we lose more of our flock before thaws open up the safer yard and pastures for the peas. It’ll thaw one day, right?

Jack Blizzard, Round Two

I’ll never again speak of “cabin fever” with my former flippant, tongue-in-frozen-cheek humor. After 4 days stuck inside, at the mercy of the Christmas of Ought-Nine Blizzard, Ray and I got out for a week or so to renew our connections with humanity, celebrate our postponed family Christmas, and let our hair down at several New Year’s Eve galas in Little Town. Our temporary freedom, though, makes all the more dismal the fact that today we’re going on Day 4 of Jack Blizzard’s Round Two. Our frustration is heightened by the knowledge that the county road grater hasn’t been able to plow our road, and our neighbor the tractor fairy, who will have to wait on the plow before he can dig out our drifted driveway, can’t get his tractor started. It was -20 overnight, so maybe if it warms up to a balmy -5 today, the tractor will turn over.

In this recent arctic blast (nighttime wind chills of -35), our furnace can’t get our drafty old farmhouse warmer than 59 degrees. We’re running out of wood for the stove that keeps our fingers from freezing into fists, and I’m now talking literary theory to the one remaining African underwater frog (I couldn’t get to town for an aquarium heater).

Ray, who is a peaceful, contented hermit by nature, has been happy as a clam. He has busied himself archiving his phenomenal LP collection, recording albums onto CD, recreating liner notes and album art for CD jackets, and downloading the CD’s into iTunes. He was up to 15,000 songs last I checked. But even Ray has had enough. He’s eyeing the fenceposts and barn siding now as visions of cord wood dance through his head.

Me, I’m a people person. I grew up in a full, noisy household (in the bustling city, no less) and spent the next twenty years or so raising my own chatty children. I do love occasional silence, and I adore the first 48 hours of solitude. At three days, however, I start to get a little tense. I pace just a little. I bake bread and make yogurt. I knit pointy wool hats much too tightly, until they curl at odd angles. By day four, conversational deprivation makes me hunt for someone to strangle.

These are trying times indeed. The parrots have learned to say, “It’s frickin’ freezing!” I’m sick of the word “hearty.” The dogs are stir-crazy. The peacocks are addicted to Meow Mix. I can see traffic on the Interstate a half-mile away, so I know people are out there, moving. I’m about ready to don the parka and start trekking through the corn stubble until I can flag down a passing truck and make a beeline for town. Groceries. Happy Hour. Civilization.

But we mustn’t give in to Jack’s little temper tantrums. So today, while we wait for impatiently for rescue, I’ll finish knitting a red paperback book jacket (Mom says I’ll be knitting ottomans and small appliances if I don’t get out soon). I’ll make olive Parmesan bread. I’ll eat the dark chocolate oranges I have stashed in the freezer. I’ll plow through another bottle of Malbec. I’ll dismantle the broken dining room chairs for firewood. I’ll pretend Pa’s on his way home with a rabbit to stew. Good work, Jack Blizzard, but you haven’t licked these prairie people just yet.

Things You Need When You're Snowed In

Jack Blizzard is stewing out west, planning to dump another 3-6" of snow on us over the next couple days. On top of the mountains already on the ground, that should make for a fine mess and will put us, again, at the mercy of kindly neighbors and their tractors. But I won't be caught off-guard this time. The Christmas Ought-Nine Blizzard taught me what to have on hand when the next round buries us...

1. Food. When you’re stocking up, know that after a day or two of being snowed in, you will crave only empty carbs. Pioneer spirit kicks in. By day two or three, you will cut imported Nan bread or whole grain tortillas into small triangles, deep-fry them in olive oil, and sprinkle with nacho cheese popcorn salt, just to have some chips. Then you’ll stir French onion soup mix or Cajun seasoning into cream cheese for dip. Isolation will make you feed all the baby carrots and apple wedges to the dogs.

2. Water. You’ll give up bathing after a couple days because, well, why bother, but you’ll want plenty of fresh drinking water. When you’re stuck inside, with the wood stove cranking and the furnace picking up the slack, staying hydrated will prevent your dry, freckled, northern European skin from flaking off in sheets.

3. Comfort Bevvies. Stock up on coffee, cream, eggnog, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and red wine. We all know you’ll die without coffee--nuff said about that. “Beggnog” (Bailey’s & eggnog) will create the illusion of merriment. And alternating Beggnog with red wine will (a) keep your blood pressure within normal limits; (b) provide enough sedation to keep you from delusional wandering out into the blizzard; and (c) prevent domestic disputes caused by extreme close proximity.

4. Vitamin D & Full-Spectrum Lightbulbs. Being snowed in means even less sunlight than prairie people typically get over a long winter. The lightbulbs will simulate sunlight as you skim your way through yet another wretched pulp murder mystery novel. And scientists are now discovering that large daily doses of D, say 1000-3000 IU’s, can prevent winter depression, the flaking off of dry freckled skin, and an odd ancestral longing for furry horned hats and lutefisk.

5. Internet. Symptoms of Internet withdrawal include twitching, delusions, waking several times a night to list things you must Google, talking to your spouse in clipped Facebook wall-post speech, involuntary rapid finger movements, and more twitching. Trying to open Firefox every 60 seconds will not restore a lost Internet connection and will only exacerbate withdrawal symptoms.

6. Layered Clothes. You’ll need a snowsuit at least 3 sizes larger than you normally wear. This will accommodate the six layers you’ll wear under it, including: (1) regular underwear, preferably heavy cotton; (2) thermal long johns, preferably silk; (3) wool socks worn on the outside of the long johns; (4) wool leggings worn over the socks to keep your bad knees warm; (5) a fleece vest (skip the bra--"perky" is undetectable under the layers); (6) railroad overalls and a wool turtleneck. Once you’re dressed, you’ll be too exhausted to pull on your mukluks, so strip back down to your long johns, make coffee, and find a bad movie to watch.

7. Bad Movies. Don’t watch good movies. You can’t risk the emotional tinderbox of two adults stuck in the same house, both questioning the nature or existence of God/compassion/civility/love/mortality. Stick with films about zombies, cheerleaders, alien slime monsters, poorly edited martial arts, or anything starring David Hasselhoff.

8. A Boat. Snow-in’s are a good time to build that small boat in your basement. It gives you something to do, lets you vent your pent-up frustrations with power tools, and ensures that in April, when the snow finally melts and your 7 acres turns into Uncannery Lake, you'll have a way out to the road.

9. Hope. Call people who live in town. Watch only TV shows/films set in sunny, warm locations. Turn your calendar ahead to June. Know that somewhere in the world, people are moving about, visiting each other, and carrying on as usual. Know that someday you’ll be back out there, too. But do a good, slow job on the boat, just in case.

Jack Blizzard Kicks Some Prairie Butt

Jack Blizzard was feeling petulant, so like a naughty teenager, he had a spiteful tantrum. Starting just before Christmas Eve, Jack dumped enough snow on us to effectively postpone Christmas. We’re hearty prairie people, and 20” of snow usually wouldn’t even slow us down, but Jack enlisted his peeps the North Wind and Bare Fields, so it wasn’t just one surly teen—it was a nasty weather gang, and there IS power in numbers.

We ended up snowed in for four days. At one point, Ray got out the Big Blower, and as Jack snickered from behind a spired drift, Ray carved a wee path round about the farmyard. So the dogs could get a run, and I could trek to the loafing shed to feed the peacocks, who were huddled in the rafters near the brooder lamp. But even the Big Blower cowered at the folly of trying to dig out our driveway, buried under one long 7’ drift. Our power blinked out a couple of times but stayed on, although our Internet was kaput for five days. I-29, which we can see from our back yard, was closed down for two days, and with no traffic and a hefty cushion of snow as far as the eye could see, it was eerily quiet, as well.

This was my first ever—I’m talking over 50 years—quiet Christmas, sans the chaos of a houseful of family & friends. It was like Little House on the Prairie, if the Ingalls had Dish network, an electric stove, and hot running water. Days one and two were delightfully peaceful; after the stress of a brutal semester and the crunch of getting grades calculated and submitted on time, the down time was a little slice of heaven. Santa came in spite of Jack, bringing Ray a make-it-yourself djembe drum kit, and dropping off a make-it-yourself winemaking kit for me—things to keep us busy, to keep us from strangling each other. Smart Santa.

Moving into day three I discovered there are only so many B movies you can watch (Fido, Tremors III, A Plumm Summer, etc.), only so many empty carbs you can eat, only so much knitting you can do, before you devolve into a whiny puffball of self-pity. I spent most of day four pasted to the greenhouse windows, feeling for vibrations that would signal a county plow, and praying for mercy, because once the road was clear, Mini Pearl, our trusty minivan, still wouldn’t make it through the 100’-long snow sculpture Jack left in our driveway.

The county plow came finally on Sunday, and that night a kindly neighbor showed up with a tractor to dig us out. We literally ran to his tractor with all the cash in the house plus two jars of homemade jam. We finally made it to Mom’s on Monday to have Christmas with Mom and the two kids who could get there. Tonight we have overnight guests coming and three parties to drop in on, and Ray’s band is playing in Little Town, so there will be dancing & merriment galore in celebration of the New Year. Ray and I will also be celebrating the gift of our first Christmas alone together, the lesson in just how much togetherness we can stand, and the amazing generosity of our little rural community.

All snow from here on out will be mere pittance. I will scoff when relatives talk about their 5” dusting of snow. And as tough as I think we plains folk are, I gotta give props to Jack: his Christmas blizzard of ought-nine kicked our hearty prairie arses. But only momentarily.