alexandra alger

Of Chocolate Eggs and Boiled Eggs

For our family, as for many unobservant Christians we know, Easter is all about hunting for colored eggs and inhaling vast quantities of egg- or bunny-shaped candy. Eggs and bunnies are symbols of spring and fertility from ancient times, various internet sources tell me—and of course, have nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. (In a 2012 article, The Huff Post says Easter eggs were made out of chocolate starting in the 19th century.) And neither does the serving of ham at Easter lunch, which harkens back to a time when pork was an abundant source of meat in early spring.

I love an occasion to gorge on jelly beans and chocolate eggs. I certainly do. But now that the kids are older, and we’re not having Easter-egg hunts anymore, and I’m buying jelly beans and chocolate eggs mainly for MOI—whose aging body really could do without them—I’m starting to feel envious of my Jewish friends. Passover is a holiday with rituals that are meaningful for the observant and non-observant alike. Years ago, a work friend invited me to a women’s Seder she hosted at her place. It was a revelation to have a meal imbued with such meaning. I now have to admit I don’t remember much. But wait—a memory of hard-boiled eggs is coming back. Jews don’t color the eggs and display them, they actually eat them! The eating of a hard-boiled egg (dipped in salt water and consumed at the beginning of the holiday meal) represents a traditional offering brought to the Holy Temple in ancient times, and is also a symbol of mourning over the loss of the destruction of the temple—or two temples, depending on which website you consult. (I’ve resorted to the internet because my most learned Jewish friends, my best source of information on Jewish traditions, are in Tel Aviv. If anyone reading this can correct me, please do!)

Our Easter will be a family event, a small one. I’m having my mother over for lunch. We’re having fish. I’m going to bake a few whole sea breams. I’ve never done it before, cooked a whole fish. I figure I can’t really mess up—as far as my mother is concerned, there’s no such thing as fish that’s been overcooked. We will not be celebrating the resurrection of Christ, but we will welcome spring—which really might at last have arrived—and all the possibilities of change and growth that spring promises.

What a Plunge!

Serendipitous events: I went to a Q&A with author Michael Cunningham (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) not long before my daughter began reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, not long before I found a copy of Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours (1998)—an homage to Virginia Woolf—at the lodge where I am now staying in Jackson, Wyoming.

So it seemed like fate: I was meant to reread The Hours.

This was a novel that everyone read and raved about, as I recall—it was The Goldfinch of 1998-99. But all I really remembered was that Virginia Woolf was a character. I’d forgotten why she was a character; I’d forgotten everything, in fact. Until I started reading, and I began to remember. One of the main characters is Cunningham’s version of Clarissa Dalloway, who, in the first chapter, is going off to buy flowers for a party. Later Woolf herself sits down to write the famous first line: “Mrs. Dalloway said she’d get the flowers herself.”

It’s one of few first lines I have never forgotten in all the years since reading Mrs. Dalloway in high school. It’s so simple, and at the same time so distinctive and yes, unforgettable.

In a very funny article Cunningham wrote in the New York Times in 2003 after The Hours was turned into a movie (remember Nicole Kidman with the fake honker, playing Woolf? And then winning the Oscar?), he describes talks about Mrs. Dalloway this way: “Woolf’s novel takes place in one day, during which Clarissa Dalloway, a 52-year-old London society hostess, shops, sees the man she might have married but did not, takes a nap, and gives a rather dull party. However, because it is an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary person as rendered by a genius, by the book’s end we understand that Mrs. Dalloway not only stands with the heroes of world literature but, by extension, that every one of us might stand so, if only a brilliant writer would look at us with sufficient depth and penetration.”

Cunningham makes me think I should be going back to his source of inspiration, but I’m happy to have The Hours in front of me. When his Clarissa centers herself in the moment, in her life, it seems like just right thing to be reading, as the spring we’re all longing for teeters on the edge of being.

“Outside the narrow kitchen window the city sails and rumbles. Lovers argue; cashiers ring up; young men and women shop for new clothes as the woman standing under the Washington Square Arch sings iiiii and you snip the end off a rose and put it in a vase full of hot water. You try to hold the moment, just here, in the kitchen with the flowers. You try to inhabit it, to love it, because it is yours….”

Resolutions!

I’ve read that 40% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions. That’s it? Fewer than half of us? I admit I’m not as formal about resolution-making as I once was. As a kid U made a list of resolutions every year. I have absolutely no recollection of what those resolutions were, year after year, or how actively I set about meeting them, or if I meet any of them. They were probably boringly benign, like “Get better at ballet,” or “Write Grammy more often”—the kind of stuff that would withstand an accidental parental reading. I wouldn’t be fool enough to put in writing anything I desperately hoped for, like “Get a boyfriend,” the one wish that would consume my adolescence.(I was finally able to check that off the mental list when I was seventeen).

But writing something down can be powerful, and I’ve realized that years of not making formal resolutions have left me in a state of severe disorganization. In the interest of clearing my head for the important stuff (like being able to concentrate on becoming a better writer) I have to clear out the clutter that’s taken over every surface in my immediate vicinity. Piles of papers—clippings, financial statements, manuscript pages, old bills that need filing. It’s a morass I have been avoiding for… umm…years? I can hardly bear to acknowledge how long these piles have been accumulating! I have to get rid of them—asap! I can’t possibly take all year, or even all month.

Resolution #1: Read and file papers on chest of drawers. (Yes, it’s gotten so bad I have a pile next to my jewelry box.) Alternatively: Read and throw out papers on bureau.

Resolution #2: Throw away or do something with the stacks of papers, binders and books on the floor of my office. I’m super bored at the idea of going through them—but I’ve got to do it!

And then there’s the issue of the clothes clogging my side of the closet. Button-downs that seemed so useful at first and now look kind of dorky. (I think my shoulders are too rounded, or something). Sleeveless summer blouses that are too…sleeveless. The dress I bought online that is too revealing and I never got around to returning. (Originally I thought it might not be too revealing. Then I realized I couldn’t possibly wear it ANYWHERE unless I went into the escort business.) What’s the rule of thumb: Throw away anything you haven’t worn in two years? I’m paralyzed by the thought I will then have very few clothes—which is irrational, since I wear tend to wear the same jeans and t-shirts over and over again.

But there’s the question of sentimental value. What to do with that dress I wore at my sister’s wedding sixteen years ago but haven’t worn since? Wouldn’t it be a sort of betrayal to give it away? How about the red linen skirt that was part of my going-away outfit after my own marriage, twenty years ago?

The wheels are turning, rational arguments coming to the fore. It’s not like I’m throwing away my wedding dress—my modest New Year’s goals do not hide marital disarray. (Now that’s an interesting premise for a story, isn’t it? Under what circumstances—other than divorce—would a woman toss her wedding dress?)

Resolution #3: Throw out clothes not worn for two years. (Or most of them.)

I feel better already. Tomorrow I’ll get down to it. This month for sure. I mean it.