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THE VIEW FROM HERE
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LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP BY EMILY MORRISON
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If I can’t clean this hovel, at least I can reduce the cluttered shapes to dim, blurry shadows. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s more than okay. It’s real life. Not Facebook life. Not an Instagram story. Not a picture taken through a Snapchat filter. It’s messy and imperfect and all the things we don’t want people to see or know about us. It’s hard to do those dishes every day. It’s hard to make your kids put the milk away. It’s hard to make sure the pups don’t keep knocking over their food bowls and chewing up the toilet paper when they’re bored and home alone. And it’s hard to do it all and have time to care about what your crazy life looks like while you’re doing it. My kids forget to pack their soccer cleats and their school lunches the night before, so most mornings we throw stuff into bags and whatever they bring is whatever they brought. I’ve never bought a hay bale and put it out front, but I do purchase a lot of those shiny decorative gourds and plop them next to all the crap on my counter and say, “Aren’t these pretty, children? They’re for decoration. Don’t eat them.” I want to be that woman, the one who remembers to buy the food to put in the slow cooker and then tells her coworkers before clocking out, “Oh, I can’t wait for our dinner tonight. Chicken marsala, yum!” Here’s the problem. I have no idea what chicken marsala is. Do you wish you knew what chicken marsala was too? Does it take that long to make? I wish I felt compelled to go online and google “chicken marsala slow cooker recipes.” I wish I cared enough to coordinate a meal 20 minutes before starvation sets in. But, alas, I’ve got other chicken nuggets to nuke, stories to tell, books to read and miles to go before I sleep. Oh, but these woods are lovely, dark and deep. Come for a walk with me. I’ve got a bright orange “don’t shoot me” vest in just your size.
PHOTO: ©PIXEL-SHOT/ADOBE STOCK
DO YOU EVER WISH you were more pulled-together? Ever felt like everybody else has every last facet of their lives colorcoded while your kitchen counter looks like a pack of wild animals ravaged it as they passed through on their way to find shelter? Where other people have desk calendars denoting their busy schedule, I have random post-its covering my laptop, fridge and tv tray that doubles as a nightstand. I don’t have laundry baskets. I have laundry bedrooms. Literally, two whole rooms in my home are dedicated to separating dirty from clean laundry. And don’t-even-get-me-started-on-the-food-storage-containers. Finding a matching lid is like happening upon the Holy Grail. Unless you’re on a crusade my friend, it’s never gonna happen for you in my kitchen. So who cares what a hot mess my house is, right? Well, you care. Because maybe you’re tired of seeing pictures of people sitting on hay bales, hanging off trees in apple orchards wearing matching flannel as they pose besides pumpkins and gourds and windswept fields and stuff. Maybe you feel like you might spontaneously combust if you see one more set of manicured mauve fingernails, mauve booties or mauve mittens. And here’s the kicker — doggos wearing plaid mauve sweater vests. Please. I can’t even get my dogs to don the bright orange, “don’t shoot me” vests I bought them. Not even to save their precious canine lives will they let me attach those things to their chests. What is it with this social media culture that makes us feel like hopeless fall failures if we’re not “setting and forgetting” our slow cookers every morning and coming home to the delicious twin smells of mulled cider and pork roast? Here’s what I can commit to: good lighting. I can pledge to turn on the twinkle lights above my mantle and the ceiling beam over my dining room. I can flick on the four electric candles on my knick-knack shelf and the string of lights above the kitchen table.
EMILY MORRISON is a high school English teacher, freelance writer and editor from coastal Maine. She is living happily-ever-after with her handsome husband, three beautiful children and two beloved dogs. And a cat.
