by Claire Cook
I shook my head. “Never mind,” I said. “Final answer.”
ONCE I GOT HOME I made my phone calls. I took a moment to shrug off the post office fiasco and to grieve the at least temporary loss of my favorite reading glasses. Then I moved on.
I turned on the TV to keep me company while I searched for backup cheaters. I found a hot pink pair (what had I been thinking?) in the junk drawer in the kitchen. They were a bit weak, maybe a 2.25 or 2.50, but they’d do in a pinch. I found two pairs of narrow, full-strength readers, still in their tubular cases, no less, at the bottom of my unbleached canvas grocery bag. One was kind of a dull bronze and the other more of a flat pewter. I wasn’t really crazy about either of them.
A little retail therapy seemed like the next logical step, so I sat down at the kitchen island and fired up my laptop. Best deal on large quantity of funky but not over-the-top bargain-priced reading glasses to replace lost favorites and if at all possible to make midlife woman feel like her pre-vision-impaired hip self again I typed into the Google search bar. Amazingly, it fit.
I paused, my index finger hovering over Google Search. I moved it incrementally to the right and contemplated the single-result-producing button. I’m Feeling Lucky, it said.
It was more than a slight exaggeration, but I pressed it anyway.
SEND YOUR FRUMPY READERS PACKING! Pitch your boring and outdated drugstore readers and become a fashion-forward reading spectacle! Pack a pair in your purse, tote, car, office, home, and vacation getaway bag, and you’ll never be blindsided again. Set includes 8 pairs stylish reading glasses in fashionista colors, along with 1 pair reading sunglasses in root beer with tortoise highlights, plus 9 individual color-coded drawstring pouches and 1 designer polypropylene water-resistant case. That’s 19, count ’em, 19 individual pieces for an astonishing $29.95. Retail value $169.99. Styled in the U.S.A./Made in China.
It seemed too good to be true, but who cared. The price was right, and they looked great in the photo, so the worst that could happen was that I’d wear each pair a couple of times and dump them when they fell apart. The truth was that I thought husbands and houses should be built to last forever, but the less sturdy nature of everything else could be a good thing. I mean, who wanted to be married to an outdated set of dishes or a dining room table you were completely over but couldn’t afford to unload because you’d spent a veritable fortune on it? Cheaper, easily replaceable items could be the spices of life.
From across the room, the television clicked into my consciousness. I glanced up. A blond reporter who looked about twelve was standing in front of a cookie-cutter house. She was surrounded by an assortment of broken chairs and three Easy-Bake ovens. Two overflowing Dumpsters were parked in the driveway like cars.
She took a quick, shallow breath. “A four-month search for a local woman came to a grisly end this week when her husband spotted her feet poking out from under a floor-to-ceiling pile of filth.”
A cat sprang on top of one of the ovens. The reporter jumped. “Police say they searched the house behind me many times, even bringing in cadaver dogs, but they were unable to locate the body among the endless layers of clothing, knickknacks, and rotting food.”
I gave my disheveled kitchen a quick glance, assessing the potential challenge to cadaver dogs.
The camera pulled back, and the reporter introduced an expert on hoarding.
“Two to five percent of Americans are chronic hoarders,” the expert began. “But that doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook. The problem for so many of us . . .”
I waited. The flavor-of-the-month reporter nodded her highlighted head encouragingly. Or maybe just to speed things up so she could breathe again.
“. . . is that we’re drowning in our stuff. We can’t find what we have. So we buy more. We can’t remember what we have. So we buy more. We’re emotionally attached to what we have, and we can’t let it go. And still we buy more. We can’t get past all the accumulated stuff in our lives to get to our own next chapters. We’re stuck, and until we get rid of all the stuff that’s holding us back and stop the endless accumulation of stuff, stuff, and more stuff . . . we’ll stay stuck.”
“Thanks for sharing,” the reporter said. “And now a word from our friends at Big Lots.”
I clicked off the TV, but I couldn’t shake the image of that poor dead woman with her feet sticking out from under a pile of junk, like some new twist on the Wicked Witch of the East. This was it, the exact message I needed to hear at the exact moment in time I needed to hear it.
I wouldn’t just pack up the mess and relocate it. I’d weed out my life. Eradicate. Eliminate. Streamline. Simplify. And once the dust settled, my next chapter would sprout up to greet me like a sunflower on a fierce summer day.
But first I leaned over my laptop and ordered nine new pairs of reading glasses, just so I’d be able to see my way out.
About the Author
Claire Cook wrote her first book in her minivan outside her daughter’s swim practice and is now the bestselling author of Best Staged Plans, Seven Year Switch, The Wildwater Walking Club, Summer Blowout, Multiple Choice, Must Love Dogs, and Ready to Fall. She lives in Scituate, Massachusetts, often called the Irish Riviera, with her family, and shares tips about writing and reinvention on her Web site, ClaireCook.com.
To learn more about Claire Cook, or to buy here books, go here.
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Claire Cook
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the print book as follows:
Cook, Claire
Life’s a Beach / Claire Cook. - 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4013-0324-2
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Middle—aged women-Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3553.055317L54 2007
813′.54—dc22
2006049227
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-4276-0
Hyperion books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact the HarperCollins Special Markets Department in the New York office at 212-207-7528, fax 212-207-7222, or email [email protected].
Cover photograph by Roy Mehta
Original hardcover edition printed in the United States of America.
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