Living Out Loud

by Anna Quindlen

  It turns out that this is the sort of person I am. For a long time I wondered, but now I am sure. Sometimes I dreamed of moving on the spur of the moment to Paris, of throwing a pair of black velvet pants and a black silk shirt and some jeans and a T-shirt into a satchel and setting up shop on the rue de Something, writing poetry and dancing till dawn until another fancy struck me. But I never was that kind of person, and I never will be. Perhaps I realized this the first Christmas that I was free, alone, mistress of my own three rooms on the top floor of a little brick townhouse in a city so big no one would know if I missed Mass because I was sleeping one off. And I rounded up the children of my friends and set out little bowls of colored frosting and made them decorate cookies with me. And I dragged home a pathetic little tree and hung the cookies on it. And I went to midnight Mass at the church around the corner and hung my stocking on my mantel and stuffed things in it the next morning. And took the bus home to my family.

  I will never jump on the next plane to Paris, never travel light. I often envy people who can. Their lives seem more exciting to me, less calcified. I am sure that they have unlimited opportunities to re-create themselves, and that they do. I look at Madonna, who was untidy in lace and bracelets last year and this year is sleek in black bustiers and an elegant cap of bleached hair, and think how exhilarating it must be to be that, to be someone new each time you turn around.

  I’m not like that. The question of moving the tree this year from one end of the living room to the other is of enormous moment. The idea of getting a slightly smaller, more practical one is simply not to be borne. I will always need my sampler with the Irish blessing, the mirror from my mother’s bureau, my appliqué quilt, the complete Dickens I bought at a flea market for two dollars when I was fifteen, yuletide carols being sung by a choir, folks dressed up like Eskimos.

  Sometimes this makes oil and water of my life: getting married in Alençon lace and pearls, and yet keeping my own name; answering all my sons’ questions absolutely truthfully, and then assuring them that Santa does exist; questioning church teachings in my mind, and yet reading the Christmas Gospel in church and feeling the power of its message in my heart. “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.” The echo I hear is the sound of the years passing: a little girl in a navy-blue wool coat with a velvet collar, a teenager in a camel’s-hair coat with big bone buttons, a woman in fur, in tears, enamored of the ridiculous notion that some things need never change, that some things are safe, holding the hand of her firstborn son in the blood-red shadows of stained glass.

  I know who I am. I am these things: the trip to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, the plaster Santa with a spray of holly in his chimney, the Advent calendar, its last door open to reveal the Nativity. I spend a good deal of time looking at Advent calendars, and was finally satisfied with this one, only to open the first door and realize with a rush of memory, like a sudden sneeze, that it was the same one I chose last year. I suppose that is just right, too. I need eternal verities—otherwise I worry that there are no verities. When I consider it in the abstract, it sometimes seems boring, odd, and old. But in real life it is, well, real life. A cold antipasto. Chicken parmigiana. I have done it before. I will do it again. Although it’s been said, many times, many ways, merry Christmas to you.

  MONSTERS

  The monster under the bed finally arrived at our house the other night. I’ve been waiting for him to show up for four years. Peter Rabbit had been read, discussed, analyzed, and placed on the floor for easy access. The little brother was coiled under his blankets, waiting to leap out and seize forbidden tow trucks and alphabet blocks as soon as the sound of the parents going downstairs had faded to a faint thump. The bathtub faucet was drip drip dripping in the next room. The drinks of water had been parceled out, demanded again, refused. The overhead light was off. The night-light gleamed.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have something very important to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “There is a monster under my bed.”

  Do you have any idea how close I came to replying, “Well, it’s about time.”

  Lord, it seems like the monster first showed up under my bed just the day before yesterday. I always figured he was a hairy guy, with a lot of teeth, a cross between Godzilla and a Gahan Wilson drawing. He never got me, but that was because I was quick and brave and careful. After I finished reading in bed I went across to the switch next to the door and turned out the light. Then I hoisted my nightgown up to my knobby knees, took a deep breath, ran three steps and leapt up onto the mattress. Don’t break stride. Don’t look down. I didn’t need to; I knew that if I had eyes in my chin I’d see a long nasty arm whipping out to grab me by the ankle and pull me under. Beneath the bedspread I was safe. One more night alive.

  What did I tell the kid about his monster? Something lame, I think, like, “Would Daddy and I let monsters in this house?” Followed by a rambling discussion of things that are there and things you only think are there and their relative dangers and merits. (The last time we had this discussion it was because he didn’t want to sleep in the top bunk. “The things on the ceiling go in my ears.” “Honey, those are shadows.” Long explanation about shadows, how shadows form, the benign nature of shadows. The next night he still does not want to sleep on the top bunk. “The shadows on the ceiling go in my ears.” Fast learner.)

  I knew what I was supposed to say. I was supposed to say there aren’t any monsters under the bed, to get down on my hands and knees and peer underneath and get him to join me for confirmation and solace. Which doesn’t do a bit of good because they come back as soon as you douse the lights, as any child knows. But I somehow couldn’t bring myself to flatly deny the monster. I have a lot of trouble with those rare times when, for good reason, I lie to my children. For instance, I’ve been tormented by Santa Claus. Here I go, telling the truth: Do all people die? Will the needle hurt? Do you love Christopher? Yes. Yes. Yes. And suddenly one day I unequivocally confirm that a fat man is coming down the chimney to leave toys, eat the cookies, drink the milk, and get to his cousin Kate’s house forty miles away before daybreak. Of course, I did this—I’m not one of those modern moms with angular etchings on my walls who thinks Santa is an irrational vestige of anachronistic religious festivals—but it felt funny to me, telling him Santa is real when he really isn’t, and when he’ll find out some day that he isn’t.

  That’s why I can’t deny the monster, tell him that nothing is under the bed. Because I believe in monsters, and someday my kid will believe in them even more surely than he does now. My mother lied. (My mother once even put a dust ruffle on the bed. Can you imagine? Giving aid and sustenance to the monsters! That lasted three days.) When you grow up you realize that there isn’t really any Santa but the monsters are still around. If only they were big and hairy; now they’re just dark and amorphous, and they’re no longer afraid of the light. Sometimes they’re the guy who climbs in the window and takes your television. And sometimes they’re the guy who walks out the front door with your heart in his hand and never comes back. And sometimes they’re the job or the bank or the wife or the boss or just that sort of dark heavy feeling that sits between your shoulder blades like a backpack. There are always terrible things waiting to grab you by the ankle, to pull you under, to get you with their long horrible arms. And you lie in bed and look at the shadows on the ceiling and feel, under the covers, just for a moment, like you’re safe. One more day alive.

  I’m feeling my way on the monster, now that he’s finally arrived. I should have had an answer for this one all cooked up, but then I wouldn’t be a mom but a magician. Make a game out of it. Tame the monster. Give him a name and some habits and maybe even a family. Leave a Tootsie Roll pop on the floor to buy the monster’s friendship. (The little brother, wild as a punk haircut, will be out of bed and unwrapping that sucker before the parents make it to the firs
t landing.) Or maybe this is one of those times when I should simply leave the kid to his own devices. After all, some things you get taught. And some things you just learn.

  FOR GERRY,

  FOR ALWAYS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is impossible to write an honest column about your own life without somehow involving your family and your friends. I have tried to do this without unnecessarily invading the privacy of those I love. I hope I have succeeded.

  The people whose lives have been most affected by my work are Quindlen and Christopher Krovatin, my sons. During the years these columns were being written, neither of them knew how to read. Someday I hope they will see these essays as affectionate and true memoirs of their childhood. My husband, Gerry Krovatin, has also seen himself in print a little too often for comfort. When I have given speeches about my column, the question I am asked most often is “How does he feel about all this?” Sometimes he likes it, and sometimes he doesn’t. But he has always been enormously supportive. So, too, has my father, Robert V. Quindlen. He has been an extraordinary influence on my life and my work.

  Many of these columns were the products of long telephone conversations with my friends. I want to thank them: Leslie Bennetts, Cynthia Gorney, Janet Maslin, Richard J. Meislin, Kathy Slobogin, Michael Specter. I also want to thank a friend who is a wonderful agent, Amanda Urban.

  This column began in The New York Times in May 1986. It was invented by A. M. Rosenthal, then executive editor, and supported by Max Frankel, now executive editor. My editor at The Times, Margot Slade, has improved my prose time after time. My editor at Random House, Kate Medina, has taken good care of this book, and of me.

  Finally, I want to thank all the people who have written to me during the years when I was doing this column. If it weren’t for those letters, I would have quit before I’d barely gotten started.

  ALSO BY ANNA QUINDLEN

  Loud and Clear

  Blessings

  A Short Guide to a Happy Life

  How Reading Changed My Life

  Black and Blue

  One True Thing

  Object Lessons

  Living Out Loud

  Thinking Out Loud

  BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

  The Tree That Came to Stay

  Happily Ever After

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANNA QUINDLEN is the bestselling author of four novels (Blessings, Black and Blue, One True Thing, and Object Lessons) and four nonfiction books (A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, and How Reading Changed My Life). She has also written two children’s books (The Tree That Came to Stay and Happily Ever After). Her New York Times column, “Public and Private,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in Newsweek.

  Read on for a preview of Anna Quindlen’s new collection of essays

  Loud and Clear

  Available in hardcover in 2004

  from The Random House Publishing Group

  A NEW ROOF ON AN OLD HOUSE

  June 2000

  A slate roof is a humbling thing. The one we’re putting on the old farmhouse is Pennsylvania blue black, and it’s meant to last at least a hundred years. Jeff the roof guy showed us the copper nails he’s using to hang it; they’re supposed to last just as long. So will the massive beams upon which the slates rest. “Solid as a cannonball,” Jeff says. Looking up at the roof taking shape slate by enduring slate, it is difficult not to think about the fact that by the time it needs to be replaced, we will be long gone.

  In this fast food, facelift, no-fault divorce world of ours, the slate roof feels like the closest we will come to eternity. It, and the three children for whom it is really being laid down.

  Another Mother’s Day has come and gone as the roofers work away in the pale May sun and the gray May rain. It is a silly holiday, and not for all the reasons people mention most, not because it was socially engineered to benefit card shops, florists, and those who slake the guilt of neglect with once-a-year homage. It is silly because something as fleeting and finite as 24 hours is the antithesis of what it means to mother a child. That is the work of the ages. This is not only because the routine is relentless, the day-in/day-outness of hastily eaten meals, homework help, and heart-to-hearts, things that must be done and done and then done again. It is that if we stop to think about what we do, really do, we are building for the centuries. We are building character, and tradition, and values, which meander like a river into the distance and out of our sight, but on and on and on.

  If any of us engaged in the work of mothering thought much about it as the task of fashioning the fine points of civilization, we would be frozen into immobility by the enormity of the task. It is like writing a novel; if you consider it the creation of a 400-page manuscript, the weight of the rock and the pitch of the hill sometimes seem beyond ken and beyond effort. But if you think of your work as writing sentences—well, a sentence is a manageable thing.

  And so is one hour of miniature golf, one tête-à-tête under the covers, one car ride with bickering in the backseat, one kiss, one lecture, one Sunday morning in church. One slate laid upon another, and another, and in the end, if you have done the job with care and diligence, you have built a person, reasonably resistant to the rain. More than that, you have helped build the future of her spouse, his children, even their children’s children, for good or for ill. Joie de vivre, bitterness, consideration, carelessness: They are as communicable as chicken pox; exposure can lead to infection. People who hit their children often have children who hit their children. Simple and precise as arithmetic, that. “Careful the things you say, children will listen,” sings the mother witch in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. And listen and listen and listen, until they’ve heard, and learned.

  There is a great variety of opinion about mothering because there is great variety in the thing itself. In Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence renders Mother an emotional cannibal, trying to consume her children. Mrs. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice is a foolish auctioneer, seeking the highest bidder for her girls. Mrs. Portnoy hectors, hilariously. It is no coincidence that these are all, in some way, richly unsatisfactory, even terrifying mothers (and that their creators were not mothers themselves). The power of the role creates a powerful will to dismiss, ridicule, demonize, and so break free.

  Fat chance, Freudians. Whether querulous or imperious, attentive or overbearing, warm or waspish, surcease or succubus, she is as central as the sun. During our lifetime motherhood has been trashed as a deadend no-pay career and elevated as a sacred and essential calling. It is neither. It is a way of life, chosen in great ignorance, and the bedrock of much of what we are, and will become.

  The flowers sent under the auspices of that gauzy pink second Sunday in May have browned now, and the cards that stood in repose on the mantel have been consigned, with their elder sisters, to the bottom of the jewelry box or the bureau drawer. All this has as much to do with mothering as a blue spruce lopped off at the trunk and strung with glass has to do with the message of Christianity. Mothering consists largely of transcendent scut work, which seems contradictory, which is exactly right. How can you love so much someone who drives you so crazy and makes such constant demands? How can you devote yourself to a vocation in which you are certain to be made peripheral, if not redundant? How can we joyfully embrace the notion that we have ceased to be the center of our own universe?

  There is the roof, growing larger and stronger, one small piece after another making a great whole, until it can withstand winds and heat and blizzards and downpours. It is a utilitarian thing, and a majestic one, too. There are ghosts beneath its eaves, ghosts vet to be born, the ghosts of my children’s grown children, saying, “Our grandparents put that roof on the house in the year 2000.” And if I could speak through the opaque curtain of time I would say, “We did it to keep you safe and warm, so that you could do your best by you and yours, just as we have tried to do.” Perhaps I would be talking t
o myself, because the house had been sold, the roof given over to shelter other people’s children. That’s all right, too. It’s the thought that counts, and the metaphor. In the sharply angled gray lines against the lambent sky I can read reports of my own inevitable passing. But I see my immortality, too, the part of me that will live forever.