OK, it's not really not shopping. I shop for food, I shop for gifts, I shop for plants and mulch to put in the yard. But I am still not buying things for myself. Still no new shoes, clothes, furniture, books, towels or gardening tools. The Bed, Bath & Beyond Store was a real challenge, with all the neat kitchen utensils, but I bought not a thing. I've gone to the mall (to buy my son some new clothes), but I hurried past the Nordstroms shoe department. Oh, the cute summer sandals, the darling little flats I saw from the corner of my eye, but I didn't even stop.
I've been shopping, too, for a sink and toilet and marble tiles to redo my first floor powder room. I haven't bought anything, but I've been to the Expo Design center twice now, dragging my husband along, to look. Some time this year I will get hold of Ivan, who repaired the kitchen ceiling when it got leaked on, who installed the pot lights above the fireplace, and who painted the outside of the house, and ask him if he can install tile and bathroom fixtures. I suspect he can do all of that. Once I show him what I want, and get an estimate, I may have the bathroom redone. I'm not in a hurry.
I read a book recently called The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith. It is the latest in his series about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency; I really enjoyed it. His main character is Mma Ramotswe, in Botswana, who is a detective, but not a typical one. There is no violence in these books, not even a lot of suspense. They are simple, cheerful little stories. I'm including an excerpt:
From The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
by Alexander McCall Smith
"The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them –wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which would make their life more bearable; this happened, and could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think just of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one’s time in tears—and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?"
I got a poetry collection for Mother's Day called Dancing With Joy. This poem seems to fit with the above quotation:
A Brief for the Defense
by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music, despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
