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Monday, February 11, 2013

Part One: Local Woman Discovers Reason to go On


A night of serving at Nye's Polanaise and more shoveling than one mayest jiggle a twig in the direction of and this gal found herself without the time to write.  Please enjoy this three-parter, wherein Pearl finds herself speculating about what may have become of a pair of gloves she lost.  From 2011...

I’m feeling particularly Scandinavian lately. Not the pretty, blue-eyed, let’s-take-our-clothes-off-and-sit-in-the-sauna Scandinavian either but the dark, brooding type sitting on an isolated farm off amongst the fjords, throwing knives into the floorboards and whistling eerie, minor-chorded dirges.

Why go on? The world is gray, cold and lifeless. I’ve not gone outside without winter boots on for four full months and there’s at least two months to go. A short-sleeved shirt is now tantamount to flashing one’s bare breasts at passing motorists: shocking, pale, familiar yet painfully naked; and I’m now down to shaving my legs once a month – whether I need it or not.

I dreamt the other night – and get this – of fruit hanging from trees.

Fruit! In trees! Ha ha ha!

I await spring, no longer confident of what it looks like but only sure that I’ve seen it before.

These have been my thoughts for several days now. I share them because I can’t be alone in this. Because if I don’t share them my next coping strategy is to take up competitive drinking.

Because, contrary to how I feel about any given moment, there is always hope; and this time, hope comes in the form of a single, knitted glove.

Let me explain.

Two months ago, both of my favorite gloves went missing. Rightie and Stinky, I called them.

Stinky, by the way, didn’t deserve his lot in life but by default became the glove with which I pick up litter. Winter litter doesn’t literally stink, of course, as it tends to be frozen, but “Stinky” became his name, primarily because “Garbage Glove” seemed disrespectful while Stinky seemed kind of home-y.

I digress.

Whatever I named them, they disappeared. O, how I cried. I looked. I called. I tried to envision them (if I were a glove, where would I be?)  And while I stopped short of posting “Have You Seen These Accessories?” fliers, both Rightie and Stinky left a glove-shaped hole in my wintery heart.

I loved those dang gloves.

Let us fast-forward then, from that terrible morning when I realized they were gone, to yesterday, because there, in the filthy snow-plowed ridge of snow in the street outside of the house, its once five-foot mass reduced by the slowly increasing temperatures to a glacier-like solemnity with its stratified ice-snow-salt-dirt tale of the season, was one, lone, outstretched finger of my left glove: one brown, frozen, defiant finger aimed squarely at the elements.

Was it the index finger, pointing toward the sky? Was it the middle finger, taunting and insolent, a wintry "up yours"? Was it perhaps, even, the thumb, a cosmic "everything's OK"?

Is it important?

My left glove in hand, I kicked around for the other.

I have yet to find it; but now, there is hope.

I thought you should know.

Stinky the Glove has been found.

Long live Stinky!


Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment!

21 comments:

Bill Lisleman said...

serving, shoveling - your back probably aches. Will the cats let you rest?
I remember this post. What would happen in your world if all these blog topics came together? Imagine cats, gloves, gin, your buddies, all riding the bus together.

Pearl said...

bill, well now there's a thought! What WOULD happen? I happen to know that just about all things -- sentient or not -- love gin. That's just a fact. If we put them all on the bus...

Hmmm. I'm rather taken with this idea. Let's let that marinate a bit, see what happens. :-)

Indigo Roth said...

Pearl, for the love of God, call the fire brigade! Under all that snow, there's a lost glove, pining for his twin! In fact, let's make it real - HIS NAME IS RIGHTIE! OH, THE HUMANITY! Indigo x

Shelly said...

Um, well, I hate to tell you...but they are wintering in Texas for the cold season. They said they'd return in the spring.

Pearl said...

Indigo, that made me laugh!

Shelly, I suspected. Hmm. Can gloves be turncoats?

stephen Hayes said...

Ha! I'm so glad stinky has been found.

jenny_o said...

I thought of this post (imagine that for a minute, Pearl, your writing has entered the memory banks of people like me all over the world!), anyway, I thought of your lost/found glove a few weeks ago during a one-day heat wave when our snowbanks melted by half ... I spied a loonie (Canadian one dollar coin) nestled in melting ice at the side of the street. Did I lose it weeks earlier? No. Did I pick it up anyhow? Yeah, you know I did! And now I'm looking for its mate to appear in the next melt, just like Stinky :)

jenny_o said...

Or maybe that should be "just like Rightie" ... you know what I mean :)

Pearl said...

Stephen, it was a tense time in my life, when ol' Stinky was missing, I tell you what. :-)

Jenny-O, you are cracking me up!!

Alistair said...

I'm concerned. Not for Righty. Not even for the sanity of one who names gloves.

No I'm concerned by the revelation that in summer you bare your breasts at passing motorists. That's the truth isn't it? That's why you describe them 'familiar'.

While I salute what you're doing for mankind may I ask you not to do this if I'm ever in the vicinity {Not that they're not probably very nice 'n all that.}

I'm a man therefore my ability to multifunction is limited and I fear the attention ratio of boobs to driving might be dangerously skewed against survival.

Thanks.

Pearl said...

Alistair, in deference to civic and automotive sense of what's right, I shall limit my breast-baring activities to weekends, holidays, and fast food drive-throughs.

Unknown said...

Even though I remembered this post, I reread it with as much enjoyment as the first time. I especially love this line:

"I await spring, no longer confident of what it looks like but only sure that I’ve seen it before."

That and and the comment about competitive drinking being your next coping strategy! Thanks so much for making me smile on this dreary day!

Joe Pereira said...

I'm so happy for you, Stinky The Prodigal glove has returned. Your writing, whatever the subject, never fails to make me smile :)

Jo-Anne's Ramblings said...

This was great haven't read it before and look forward to reading the next pare of it.......

Connie said...

So glad to hear Stinky has been found. My hands got cold just reading about poor Stinky being trapped in the snow. ;)

Unknown said...

I liked the post. I LOVED and laughed out loud at the comment by Alistair Robertson. There's always a giggle here at Pearl, Why You Little. Thanks for the uplift.
Rosemary

Red said...

Now there's a story I can relate to. Saunas? Yes! Lost gloves ? that's me. However, I rarely find mine.

HermanTurnip said...

It's funny, but I have an emotional attachment to a pair of leather pants I used to wear during those years when I attended dozens of music concerts each year. They're the perfect shade of brown, made of supple leather, and are the kind of pants that Jim Morrison would give his right temporal lobe for. I've unfortunately outgrown them, but I'll be damned if I'm ever going to throw them away.

Rose L said...

Did Stinky get a bath and a warm sauna flop in the dryer?

Optimistic Existentialist said...

You can send some of that snow here to KY and I'll gladly accept :)

Austan said...

Oh now here's eerie wintry coincidence. My friend Special K lives down the street here in the Shire. She lost a glove- a left glove- in the beginning of December. Just this last weekend the new and very stupid snow removal persons dug into a ten foot snowbank and upheaved it. There on top of the fresh heap sat her glove, two fingers up in a rock n roll salute. There's a conspiracy and I'm telling the internet.