Thursday, December 5, 2002

one of my many unfinished projects...rescuing this sculpture from the undergrowth

"Time is very dangerous without a rigid routine. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival."

Flannery O'Connor

I decide to make my day play a little differently by first working on the Christmas mailing and then by going to the gym and my dad's later in the day.

The Christmas (holiday) mailing is interesting. Not what we mail, but the process. We always make up a funny (to us, anyway) letter or card or something. Something original. We used to have them printed but now I do it on the color ink jet. Last year it was postcards that betrayed the true purpose of the Christmas mailing. Which is to confirm that we are still at this address and alive and to try to confirm that the people we correspond with are at the addresses that are in our data base. Oh, yeah, some people wish each other well with a printed snowman or even a personal scribble or one of those 'what our family did all year that your family could never hope to achieve' mass printings. But really we are just testing the communication paths between here and yon.

This year we are mailing a two sheet foldover with a send-up of the Nutcracker story that FFP wrote. It's funny, I think. I laughed too hard to proofread it.

But, as I say, it isn't the mailing. A lot of people won't read it. Especially this one because I put it in six point type to fit it on three sheets. It's the process that's interesting.

First, I go through my Access data base of people and clean it up a bit. If someone has died, I eliminate them. If I know that someone isn't at that address and I have no idea where they are, I take them off. There are always a few of these corrections I already know to make. I mark the column labelled 'XMAS' with a 'Y' for those I'll send a mailing out to. I run a query and merge the result into labels and print them. (This step usually involves much cursing until I get the procedure right which I'll forget by next year. Thank you Microsoft for such handy, expensive hard-to-use tools.) I have about three hundred entries in the data base, but I only printed 197 labels this year. I know more people than this, but some people have never sent us any snail mail and I don't know their address. I could theoretically look some up in the phone book or something. But usually I wait for them to give us a card or send us something to get the address from. Some people I keep on the list but don't select for printing. It's a highly chaotic process.

Anyway. I then pare the list again because, looking at the labels and the piles of printed mailers dwindling and the number of used 37 cent stamps climbing, I decide to not send some of the people I printed a label for a mailer. Or FFP decides for people who are closer to him. As I prepare the mailers, I put the label on and then I write something in the blank space with a red pen. Usually, I have something to say. "Let's get together." "Long time no see...I think of you often." There are some I'm sending this year where I feel I have to tell the person that my mom died. Because they knew her and they probably don't know this. Others have probably not heard that I retired. I'll mention that.

The chances of someone (you, dear reader?) receiving a mailer increase with your own snail mail habits. As cards come in to us, I clean the mailing list, maybe send out some late mailers and add new people to the list. As the returns come in ('no such person' or 'forwarding expired') I update my list. If one comes back with a new address that hasn't been forwarded, I change the address in my list but I don't resend. Not usually anyway.

Each year I think that we will send commercial cards and not print something ourselves. But then we don't. Some years I think we won't do it at all but we do anyway.

I have to say that I enjoy receiving the cards. One year I posted a summary of all the ones I received. Statistics on how many family 'newsletters', how many pictures of trees or snowmen or doves. Maybe I'll do that this year. So far we've gotten three cards, I think. One had a snowman and Christmas tree. Family newsletter inside. Grandchildren and grand travels. One of my favorite couples sent that one. Another from a business, but a business run by one of our favorite individuals, Eddie Bernal. The third? From George and Laura. Hand-signed. Just kidding. I wonder how many they send?

As I work on the cards, I think about how I know the person. Why I'm still sending a card if I've known them a long time. I think back to Junior High or even elementary school in some cases. I think of this person I once worked with and how he sent a red sweater to me one Christmas because one year he wore one to work and we traded for the day...he wearing my dull brown cashmere, me his bright red one. About how he bought me a ride in a Grob...a sail plane that takes off under its own power. About how he gave all the ladies at work a rose at Valentine's. Nice guy. Different kind of guy. He was one of three guys at that job who shared lunch at some restaurant with me lots of days. Here is somebody else on the list I knew decades ago. I think about commuting with him to Dallas from Denton and wonder what his life is like now. I remember his first daughter as a baby and now his kids are grown and gone. I think about my relatives and all our history. I think about the reasons I've kept up with another group of people for decades (travel, other common interests, their persistence in writing and sending cards) while other people I met in the same time frame are completely forgotten.

So I do a stack of the mailers and go to the gym.

What, you may ask, is this gym like that you go to all the time? Well, it is really a country club. Only in the city and no golf. The main part of the main building was a stately home on Lake Austin once. Maybe before Lake Austin was a lake. (When it was just the Little Colorado river. Before Tom Miller Dam.) The workout area isn't huge. Maybe 20x40 with a glassed in dance studio attached (the glass allows the view of the lake to be more expansive albeit through a few glass panels and some people practicing yoga or doing sit-ups. There are also a couple of racquetball courts and locker rooms, a desk and office and a small coffee bar. Above the windows in the workout area are four TVs. If you bring a headset (I never do) you can tune in on some of the machines to your choice of programs.

It's the kind of place where a lot of people have personal trainers setting their machines and counting their reps and listening to their stories. It's the kind of place where a woman comes out as I'm leaving in a mink coat, exercise clothes and her leg done up in a brace and greets me warmly. I've forgotten who she is. It's the kind of place where an old man in neat khakis and a flannel shirt uses the weight machines.

So, if I'm spending all this time in the gym, am I getting fit or thin? Not really. Two months with about three-fourths of the days in the gym (and many off days doing walks) doesn't turn around years of abuse. I'm just getting used to the routine and how to pick up the pace. My upper body is so wimpy that the lightest weights feel heavy. But I am making some progress. Just none visible to the naked eye.

I go by my dad's place after the workout. There is one lonely letter in his mailbox. I sort through a few more of my mother's clothes. In some ways, she seemed to have so many things. But, looking more closely, not really. Many drawers have scraps of material, craft tools and supplies. Of course, there are all these miniature displays and things she wove. And two looms and a spinning wheel that still don't have a home. Yesterday, I took an old rolling pin out of one of the kitchen drawers because I didn't have one. She has a marble one with a marble slab to roll pastry on the counter. I doubt my dad will use it, but it looked more ambitious than my needs. I have scoured through stuff looking for things I could take or borrow. A punch bowl and cups. Does that food processor still work? I could maybe use that paper cutter on some of my projects. Mostly, I think it will take time but eventually there will be many empty cabinets and drawers in this house. The walk-in closet is already over half empty. I took a few clothes for myself, but a lot went to the thrift store. Shoes and purses, too. Each time I show up at the the thrift store with a load, they thank me. How much of it they can use and how much moves through the pipeline to be sent to poorer countries or whatever, I don't know. I really must get cracking in taking some of my own stuff over there. Stuff I know that I could get money for at a garage sale but that I also know will be good to spark people to come into the thrift store and spend. And the thrift store supports one of my charities. So...think of it as giving money to them.

I go home. I decide to move my Christmas mailing project to the media room so that I can watch something or listen to music while I work on it. I watch a laser disk of a Roy Orbison concert. I make a little progress on the cards, but FFP proposes a trip to Fonda San Miguel (the interior Mexican restaurant around the corner) and I have to shower up to go. I have a couple of margaritas and some corn soup and calabicita relleno. Chips, hot sauce. Our friend Gayle (she's also the bookkeeper) goes along. Her dog (La Femme Nikita) and Chalow stay home. We go home and watch various TV shows and talk. We always like hanging out with Gayle.

JUST TYPING
The mailing list.
Deleting the dead.
Wondering just who some of the people are.
Choices.
Who to keep.
What to write.
Knowing.
Some will come back.
A stamp with a pointed finger.
This person is lost.
To me.
Undeliverable.
Forwarding expired.
Unknown.
Each name a certain set of memories.
A brief encounter.
A long history.