Those Advice Blogs

There are so many advice blogs on the web.  They tell you how to lead a simpler life,  make your house more light and cheerful, raise chickens, train dogs, cope with children, plant a garden, get in touch with your true self.

Often, in the dark of night, I wish I too could write an advice blog.  Advice blogs seem to generate such buzz, such enthusiasm among the readers.  They give people hope, and something to try--no wonder they're popular.  So I toss and turn and look around in my mind and in my heart for something that I could give advice about.  Surely I've been around long enough to have some words of wisdom to impart on the multitudes.

But every time I rummage in the attics of my brain (and of my heart--mustn't forget the heart!)  I come up with a collection of raggedy afghans, old dog collars, musty files and abandoned projects-- nothing that I would want to bring to the light of day.

In my blithe thirties and forties I used to write articles for the popular press, and many of them offered some kind of advice:  how to run with your dog, how to get your kids to pick up after themselves, why it was a good idea to have dinner for breakfast (yes, that was actually published).  I was no authority on dog training or child rearing or nutrition, but I spoke in good faith from personal experience, and was confident that others might benefit from it.  And,  though they weren't my favorites, those advice articles always sold.

Now here I am, older and supposedly wiser, yet I feel unable to offer advice even on how to put your pants on in the morning.  (Wait!  I do have something to say about that:  it's good for your brain if you alternate which leg you put in first.)  Who am I to tell you how to train your dog, raise your chickens, or achieve serenity?

I remember so clearly when I was fourteen thinking that when I finally grew up I would understand all things and my adolescent angst would vanish forever.  Why didn't anybody tell me that that angst, though slightly different in flavor and texture, would stay with me for the rest of my days?

I went through a period of relative certainty when I was a parent, probably because this is an adaptive mechanism for the species.  But now that my parenting days are over everything is subtler, grayer, less defined.  From day to day the ground seems to shift under my feet.  I have forgotten so much of what I used to know, and the stuff I'm learning now is almost impossible to put into words.

I doubt that things are going to become any clearer in the coming years.  Still, if by some miracle one of these days I have a flash of understanding--and the words with which to express it--I'll be sure to write about it here.

Weird Advice I've Gotten Over The Years

Beginning with earliest infancy:

"Chew your food well." I've always bolted my food, probably as a result of the neonatal deprivations with which I may regale you some day. Turns out my mother was right. Digestion begins in the mouth (saliva and all that sort of thing) and you get more nourishment from food if you chew it thoroughly. Plus, you can lose weight that way, as it slows everything down and gives your stomach a chance to send fullness signals to your brain.

"Never leave the house without gloves on your hands and bows on your braids." My mother again. This was less a protection against the weather in (mostly) balmy Barcelona than a desire to have me look 1950s proper at all times. Misplaced gloves and hair ribbons were the bane of my childhood.

"Never read after a meal." Darn! That meant I had to actually sleep at nap time. My mother was referring to the phenomenon, otherwise known as "post-prandial torpor," whereby the blood leaves the brain and rushes to the stomach to help with digestion. Forcing the brain to work might interfere with the latter.

"When you go to bed, lie down on your back, with your arms alongside your body and your hands not all over the place." The German nuns who presided over my childhood. I took this so much to heart that my college roommate said that when I lay down to sleep I reminded her of a cadaver laid out in its coffin.

"Do not do ugly things." The German nuns again. This was repeated over and over, but at six, seven, or eight years old I had no idea what it meant.

"Always be pure, always be chaste." My paternal grandmother, pulling my uniform skirt over my knees. Again, no idea what she was talking about. But I did begin to learn certain principles of how to sit when wearing a skirt.

"Never meet a man's eye on the street." This was never actually verbalized, but it was ingrained in me from the time I could toddle along on errands. My mother never looked a man in the eye when we went to the fish market; my aunts never looked a man in the eye when they picked me up from school; needless to say, my grandmother never looked a man in the eye....

"Strapless gowns are an occasion of sin." Father McCarthy, my Irish religion teacher. No worries there. It was my high school's policy not to allow strapless gowns at school dances. We girls were told that if we wore provocative clothes, we would be culpable not only of our own sins, but of those of the boy we inflamed as well.

"Boys are like light bulbs, girls are like irons." Father McCarthy again. Not an inaccurate description of the sexual response in each gender. He said this to us in our annual day of "love and marriage" instruction, when boys and girls were separated. He added that an iron eventually gets as hot as a light bulb, so we should be very, very careful.

"Never trust a man who has a nose on his face." My maternal grandmother. But she said it with a twinkle in her eye.

"Remember, when you are on one of your famous dates, that God is watching you." A letter from my father.

"It's better to be loved than to be right." My mother in law. She was told this tidbit upon her marriage in the 1940s, and passed it on, with the best intentions, to me in 1967. It did not sit at all well with me--in fact I was outraged--and I'm afraid I told her so....

"No man will stay with you if you don't stop being so moody." My mother. But, amazingly, he did.