Under It All

Dear Reader and Friend,

For the joy of it, I entered a writing contest. But not just any writing contest. It was a humor writing contest. And I don’t write humor. Or I don’t think I do.Yet.

I am tired of writing about grief. And caregiving for my mother with Alzheimer’s. And my mother in general. As much as I try to avoid these topics, one of the three always creeps into my writing every single time I sit down and write. For now and maybe always, I will continue to write about them because they are a part of me. They make me who I am, and I am who I am and write what I sometimes know and this all boils down to my passion for writing.This passion is my joy.This joy grows when I challenge myself with something new, especially when this newness feels light.

When I came across this humor writing contest in mid-October, I humored myself and gave it a try. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain in the enjoyment department. I was craving laughter, so I started with my own company. I wish it were more often than once in a Beaver full moon (November 27, and it was beautiful) that I come across something or someone so funny that my stomach aches from laughing. What else can balance loss and sadness better than belly laughter or laughter that sprouts a joy cry? How do we continue to laugh when we feel burdened with something or when the world is hurting?

I had a blast with myself writing “Under It All” that I submitted. As I wrote every word, I laughed at myself for thinking I could write into the margins of the humor genre. I waited and forgot about the contest. I waited and forgot about it more. Then I remembered when the winners were to be announced and waited and waited and waited to hear. I woke up yesterday morning to a rejection email. The letter was very nice. It stated the pool of submissions was simply outstanding and it was a competitive race up to the very end. It is always a competitive race with these submission opportunities. But HOPE!

I am happy for the two winners and those with honorable mentions. Writing participation trophies do not exist, and this is okay. The greatest advice I received once from an author lecture was to spend at most five minutes sulking about a rejection letter. After I pouted a little longer than her recommendation, I reread my essay, rewrote a bit, and thought, why not share it in The Birch Chronicle. I may have renamed and renewed this creative space, but one thing remains the same: I will not hide that I am a work in progress as I practice my passion and find my avenue. This is a space for connection over perfection.

Somewhere amid my words below, I hope you find a little chuckle. Until I write to you again, I wish you an encounter with something or someone in the hustle and bustle of the season that makes you laugh out loud for a generous amount of time. Maybe that someone is you trying something new! Every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.

Marie

“Under It All”

We graduated wearing day-old underwear. You don’t have to say a word. I know. You would think that two grown women who, between us, raised seven children, would have the innate skill to lay out our clothes the night before; to make sure our selected outfits were carefully pressed and undergarments neatly folded; to be prepared to receive our graduate degrees as our mothers would have expected. But in four handfuls of ways, we are not like our mothers who, without a doubt, were watching us through a telescope from heaven.

Among the vibrant colors of regalia under mid-mitten Michigan sky, we stood at the foot of the chapel steps behind the Scot’s bagpiper gearing up to lead the graduating class in commencement. Matilda and I were preoccupied with a thousand thoughts. We actually did it. As mothers and wives, we succeeded as graduate students. We made it through two years of rigorous study and meeting assignment deadlines. We traversed through academia language that drove us down the rabbit hole of studying the origin of the word laundry. Apparently, little sunk in while rummaging through that dirty hole with the root word, leue meaning “to wash,”because that’s right, day old underwear.

We were giddy to be two of the six graduates of the college’s first master’s program. Our undergraduate degrees thirty and forty years ago were indeed more “going through the motions” decisions to simply earn a degree. Now, we were enrobed with life experiences, old enough to be the mothers of the undergraduates standing around us who helped us feel young and perhaps even a vital image of the day. In fact, I played the stand-in supportive mother for two graduates, one from Russia and the other from Tanzania, whose mothers virtually watched their daughters’ ceremony from their home countries. Matilda befriended a young woman in such a serious way that they exchanged phone numbers and continue to text one another, the young woman from her graduate apartment surely showered before walking to class and Matilda from her writing chair still in her pajamas at 3PM. Well, I shouldn’t assume Matilda’s choice of attire day in and day out. Her wearing pajamas all day while she writes is an educated guess. And remember, our day-old underwear scenario.

Matilda and I are only daughters, each having grown up with three brothers. Our mothers graduated high school. My mother attended college as a day student for one year before quitting, full of resentment. I don’t blame her. She felt she never fit in with the all-women college community having to come and go from home all the time. Plus, her protective Italian immigrant parents paid for her three brothers’ traditional college experiences but not hers. She didn’t have a mentor in her life or a friend such as Matilda to encourage her to work and pay her way through Purdue University where she was also accepted and fulfill her dream to be a nutritionist. But thank God for nurturing nuns. In 1953, Sister Bernice from her church saw potential in my mother as a teacher and encouraged her to attain a teaching certificate. That same year, Matilda’s mother studied at a small midwestern medical and dental technique school, now non-existent, to earn a medical laboratory certificate. Matilda and I were sure of one thing about our mother’s certificate ceremonies and that is, they were dressed in chic shin length dresses—pressed, pleated, and belted—comfortable chunk heals, beehive hairdos that made eyes swarm, and most importantly, clean underwear.

The night before our graduation ceremony, Matilda and I were busy working bees navigating back and forth to our cars schlepping our water kettles (you think we could share), coffee bean grinders, clothes, twenty books we thought we’d have time to read during our last ten-day grad school residency, yoga mats we never rolled out, and other trinkets and potions we brought but never unpacked to make our brief apartment stay feel like home.

I learned from my daughter’s college graduation a few years prior to ours that wearing cotton shorts and a tank top under graduation gowns is the cool choice when you’re worried about sweating under black polyester robes. Matilda and I kept those pieces of clothing in our room our last night. One useful thing neither one of us thought to pack, however, was an iron. We un-balled our graduation gowns, satin stoles and jazzy velvet hoods and hung them in the bathroom hoping the shower steam in the morning would make them presentable. Presentable for whom? Us? Our fathers, who have been long gone and who we decided both deserve more space on the page? Our mothers, who we were positive befriended each other in death and had a lens on us that neither of us could escape? Or was it to show our grown children and husbands that, regardless of what is over and under it all, Matilda and I are indeed the women who raised and married them? We are human beings after all full of organized disorganization and opportunities our mothers never had or didn’t fulfill because of one roadblock or another. Wrinkles and all, we dressed in the pomp and circumstance of ourselves which was familiar to one another and walked to the chapel.

A few minutes before 10AM, a steamy wind played with the Great Highland Bagpiper’s tasseled sporran as if to distract me from his stirring music that was starting. To cool myself off from my building emotions, I thought about my mishap and wondered how many people have found themselves with dirty underwear worn inside out for a special occasion. I turned to Matilda and confessed.

Matilda, guess what?

What?

Last night, when we were packing up our rooms and all our stuff we brought and didn’t need, and took most everything to our cars…

Yeah?

Well, I accidentally packed up all my underwear, too. This morning, I couldn’t find the pair I thought I left out. So, I turned my underwear inside out. I am wearing day-old underwear to our graduation! Can you believe it?

Matilda burst into her free flying laugh that not only lasts and lasts until it seems she won’t catch her breath for hours but jumps into me too. It was a simple yes or no answer. Time was running out. The Piper was proceeding. There were two steps left before we entered the full chapel of waiting friends and relatives.

Gosh! Of course, I believe you. The same darn thing happened to me!

I wasn’t surprised that this didn’t surprise me.

Matilda attempted to compose herself.

I had to because I was first in line, and we weren’t entering a comedy show.

Matilda, are we going to tell our families?

No.

Are we going to admit this to anyone?

I don’t think so.

Ever?

What happened during grad school, stays at grad school. At least for a while.

I agree. But Matilda, do you think our mothers know?

We snuck in a last peak of the blue sky. It was wide and as endless as our imaginations. We couldn’t tell if the skirl was coming from our mothers’ telescopic tartans or the Piper’s Plaid in front of us. The vibration of air was haunting yet consoling. As our eyes agreed on an answer, we blew kisses upward then walked over the threshold.