Or “How I Didn’t Spend My Summer Vacation.”
This is one of those posts that, perhaps, is better suited in some ways for Old Man, Talking, but this one has pictures and that other site is involved in a new novel which you should probably read, so we’re going to put this one here for the convenience of having here for the purpose of putting things.
I wrote recently of the need for everyone to take a vacation, and some people, I’ve noticed by the endless parade of beach and lake pictures on social media, have done so. Not all of us can take those risks, though, which hardly seems fair, but then, nothing ever is, so, whatever, man. We have to find our own leisure.
If Dudeism has a sacrament, and nothing officially says that it does, it is bowling; not necessarily in the literal sense, though that’s where this is ultimately going, but at least in the metaphorical sense of engaging in an activity that requires absolutely no skill for one to enjoy the act of participation. Just don’t step over the line, man. We’d have to mark it a zero.
Turns out, there’s a lot of wisdom in doing nothing. Kierkegaard, when he wasn’t doing something else, said “Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.” Gertrude Stein took it a bit further with, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” Extrapolate out a bit and that honorary Ph.D. one gets for doing nothing starts to feel pretty weighty.
Perhaps the quote that best gets to the point is this one from The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, translated by Burton Watson. Pay attention to this:
Once there was a man who was afraid of his shadow and who hated his footprints, and so he tried to get away from them by running. But the more he lifted his feet and put them down again, the more footprints he made. And no matter how fast he ran, this shadow never left him, and so, thinking that he was still going too slowly, he ran faster and faster without a stop until his strength gave out and he fell down dead. He didn’t understand that by lolling in the shade he could have gotten rid of his shadow and by resting in quietude he could have put an end to his footprints.
Leisure comes in many forms and to say that one has to go bowling in the literal sense would be antithetical to the most basic premise of Dudeism. You’ve got to be you. Still, there’s something to be said for sitting around in rented shoes and heaving a 14-pound ball at ten carefully-weighted pieces of shaped wood. Personally, I find it cathartic right up until about the eighth frame when my shoulder starts hurting, causing me to drop the last two frames. My diagnosis is that I should probably spend more time bowling.
Looking for something we could do with children led us to this reliable form of recreation. We confirmed with the bowling alley that no one was allowed in without a mask (they were delightfully fierce about that qualification), social distancing was excessively enforced, and that every reasonable sanitation method was being applied, piled the offspring into the van, and introduced them to this most sacred of Dudeist pastimes, which, qualifying as vacation this year, necessitated pictures.
Who won or even how high the scores were is irrelevant. There’s no proof that the Dude himself ever actually bowled a frame; he just sat there as though he might if he’d wanted to. The whole scoring thing is digital now anyway, which makes that bowling class I took in college, where the final exam was correctly scoring a game, by hand, on paper, rather moot at this point. What’s important is that we were introducing the children to the skill of leisure, a skill that, when properly refined, will do them much good for the rest of their lives. They’re too young for bowling alley beer, of course, but there were chili dogs so, in some ways, from a gastrointestinal perspective, I guess that’s the same.
I guess what I’m showing you this week are, kind of, our family vacation photos. And one might notice that I’m not in any of the photos. That’s not a bad thing. The evidence of my presence is the fact that the photos exist. Of course, I couldn’t just dump them on you with standard processing. I’d be just like everyone else on social media if I did that. They’re what we’ll call “enhanced”. Whether you like them or not is, like, just your opinion, man. What’s important is that we understand the great importance of leisure, of actively, intentionally, doing nothing. Look at the pictures and then take a nap.
Remember these words of Oscar Wilde: “To do nothing is the most difficult thing in the world. The most difficult, and the most intellectual.”
Enjoy.
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A Mother’s Beauty
Mother’s love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved. —Erich Fromm
Mother’s Day brings plenty of memories, but we forget the beauty sacrifices mothers make for us.
I typically avoid the topic of mothers on Mother’s Day, partly because that’s what everyone is talking about and I’m not sure I can, or should, compete for your attention. Mother’s Day is also a little sad now that my own mother is gone. Some days it is better to let others do all the talking.
We romanticize our mothers in a sense, not that such a perspective is inappropriate, but our love for our mothers sometimes keeps us from seeing the depth of a mother’s sacrifice for her children.  She wouldn’t bring it up, of course, mothers rarely do. But what we remember of our mothers is seen through the perspective of a child. We don’t see what all went on in a mother’s life before she had children and everything she willingly gave up for us.
There aren’t many pictures still around of my mother when she was young. Her family was dirt poor and didn’t have a camera so the only pictures are those someone else took and gave her. What I see in those few pictures, though, is someone with a quick smile, sparkling eyes, and curly jet-black hair. I can understand why Poppa found her attractive. She was petite, like her other mother, with her father’s slim build; enough curve to be feminine, but not so much as to appear inappropriately sexual, which was apparently a thing back in the 1950s. She wore bobby socks with loafers and heels and gloves as was common at the time. Poppa said she was very prim and proper, very strict in her etiquette, but more than anything, he said she was beautiful.
Sure, everyone thinks their mother is beautiful, but we don’t see the same beauty that our fathers did. We see someone who is loving and caring and made sacrifices for us so that we could have everything we needed. Remember, though, that our fathers knew our mothers before we did and they saw her beauty in a different light. Â They saw a side of a mother’s beauty that we’re not all that comfortable discussing. Despite everything that might have happened later, all the arguments and divorces, the illnesses and emotional issues, before we were born our fathers thought our mothers were sexy. They wouldn’t likely use that word in front of us, but that’s what they were thinking.
I occasionally come across someone who has nude photographs of their mother taken before they were born. We don’t often think of artistic nude photography having existed much before Helmut Newton, but it most certainly did, and was secretly very popular. Â The difference was that they kept those photos to themselves. There was no Internet or social media on which to share them, so rarely did anyone else ever know they had been taken and it certainly wasn’t something they would just show to the kids. Typically, the photos are found by the adult child while helping their mother go through things later in her life. They elicit all knew stories about a side of our mothers we never considered: they were sexy.
Then, we came along and spoiled it all. The effect might not have happened immediately. Some women’s bodies handle childbirth better than others. Others, though, never lose the weight they put on carrying you. Hips that widened to facilitate your delivery didn’t snap back in place. If you kicked the wrong thing while you were swimming around in all that amniotic fluid, you likely created a physical problem your mother had to endure the rest of her life. She was thrilled to nurse you and cuddle you close, but because of that her breasts sag and she never looked the same in a swimsuit again.
You gave her stretch marks and those dark circles under her eyes from 18-plus years of never getting enough sleep and worrying about the trouble she knew you were getting into, even if she didn’t know exactly what it was. You killed her arches as she ran after you in shoes that were not meant for running. Her joints eventually became stiff and arthritic from all the times she put herself in unnatural positions to find that toy you had just dropped, or teaching you how to play leap frog, or picking you up and carrying you from the playground after you fell from the swing, again.
Before you were born, that lady you now call your mom paid more attention to how she looked when she went out. Her ensemble was carefully put together, even if it was more bohemian and less Chanel. She might have even worn makeup and had her nails done. After you came along, though, she was happy if what she was wearing didn’t have any fresh stains and if everything matched it was more by coincidence than design. Your mother’s stylist thought you were cute, but secretly hated you because your mother went from trying out different cuts and colors to short and easy-to-manage.
After  you came along, your mother didn’t go out with friends as often, didn’t travel as much, gave up on trying to fit into Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and damn sure wanted to make sure there was sufficient coverage between her and her Calvin’s. Almost everything that had gone into making her so physically desirable to your father either you ruined or she had to give up to care for you, except for one thing: Love.
And that’s what we remember on Mother’s Day: her love. After all, that’s what is important, right? Nothing else matters, at least, not now. A mother’s beauty isn’t defined by how “hot” she looks, how many heads she once turned, or how many hearts she once broke. A mother’s beauty is defined by how she could kiss a boo-boo and make the pain go away, or how she knew exactly when you needed her to make those special pancakes, or how she could mend a broken heart then help you plot revenge. She likes that definition.
Mothers don’t care about what they’ve given up for you. The love you and, in the vast majority of situations, would do everything all over again (with the benefit of a little wisdom from the experience). She loves you, you love her, and that makes everything beautiful enough for her. But don’t you ever forget that she did make those sacrifices. I’ll tell you what she might not: you owe her. Big.
A poet, whose name escapes me at the moment, once said that a mother’s beauty is defined is defined by the grace and compassion of her children. Your mother gave up a lot for you. Make her beautiful, damnit.
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