Ordinarily, She Doesn’t Mind Sharing

There is a question, put to me all the time, for which I often lack a suitable answer.

It is a perfectly innocent question, void of all malice, and yet, it sometimes burrows under the skin in a way that, by and by, gets to me.

Let me be clear that it is not the asking that bothers me, but the lack of honest answering on my part. The question is well known and is presented in many forms. The most familiar is the perfectly acceptable, “So, what’s new?”

Just as often it is, “What have you been up to lately?” Or, sometimes, “So, what are you doing today?”

Unless I’ve got something really juicy up my sleeve, most people don’t really want the sordid details.

They do not want to know that I got up at 6:27 a.m. and helped the kids pick out clothes for school and that one couldn’t find navy socks and the other couldn’t find her black shoes.

They do not want to know that I discovered a run in my nylons when I stopped for coffee about 8:15, so I had to return home and dig up another pair. They do not care that I’m tired because I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. typing up a calendar outlining softball practices, games and Picture Day - they have their own Picture Days to worry about, for heaven’s sake.

They don’t want to hear that the girls and I are currently reading a chapter a night of Judy Blume’s “Super Fudge,” and what a highlight of the day it is to laugh so hard you have to get up and walk around to keep from getting a crick in your side.

No, what these questions really are digging for is what task or accomplishment is worthy of a news flash.

The trouble is, most of my “doing” concerns staying on top of life’s most ordinary tasks, things such as remembering that the milk is getting low or making sure homework gets done.

And sometimes I even screw up those, as I did that night when the dogs ate Corn Flakes. I believe writer Margaret Mitchell must have sometimes felt as I do today because I remember reading that she was once asked what she’d been “doing” lately, and you know what she said?

She said something like: Doing? Being the author of “Gone With the Wind” is a full-time job!

None of us is Margaret Mitchell, but perhaps we can relate on at least one level. Living in the 20th century seems to be a full-time job, too.

Between working and filing our taxes and juggling teacher in-service days and keeping up on current affairs and scheduling doctor appointments and returning calls and sending out birthday cards and washing the car and remembering what day the library books are due, who has the time or energy to set the mind to any great accomplishments?

The pursuit of notable “doing” is pushed aside by the more pressing task of simply living - work of such demands, needs, urgency, proportions and energy, one is powerless to escape its clutching grasp.

But remember: This sort of “doing” is life - important and newsworthy as any front-page story, even though headlines never scream: “Woman Finds Child’s Missing Soccer Cleats After 45 days!”

No one knows that the father down the street single-handedly saved his block from a child-care disaster on President’s Day. No one ever gives the piano teacher a medal for feeding half the neighborhood every time she makes black beans and chili.

Instead, pollsters, politicians and pundits call us ignorant; harangue us for not keeping up. It’s Newt Gingrich, DNA results and Clint Eastwood’s midlife crisis on Monday. Affirmative action, tort law and garage-door decoders by Tuesday.

The strain of simply keeping up is beginning to show on people’s faces. It is all very complex. Leaves me tired. Makes my head spin.

But as much as it sometimes feels as though life is spinning out of control, other aspects stay thankfully the same.

The winter was excessively wet this year, leaving the ground as thick and mushy as an oatmeal gruel. People stay indoors more, but there is a payoff for this forced isolation. Friends meeting unexpectedly seem to engage in a reunion of long-lost kindred souls each time they meet. It is glorious. Profound. I have hugged more women friends in a Sacramento winter than I ever did living in sunny L.A. year-round.

Likewise, the March light is lengthening, and a golden glow is pushing out the gray. I heard the first crack of a bat to baseball last weekend and there are more people to say hello to when I walk or run in my usual places. I am still waiting for the sound of frogs, but waiting and listening is to be expected when it comes to frogs.

And no matter what Congress plans for spring, the bulbs appear to be insistent about showing their pastel faces in the garden out front.

What have I been doing? Oh, living.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diana Griego Erwin McClatchy News Service