a day with Meg

Yesterday morning I had to go with my coworker Mary to set up a display for the Auction at the mall. Yes, folks, the mall where I drudged my life away for nine months on two minimum-wage, benefitless jobs.

I was unprepared for the strength of my reaction to that consumeristic, soulless place. I had, consciously, to wipe the disgust and revulsion and resentment off my face when we came out of the dingy back hallway into the main area of the mall. It actually took courage.

I didn't realize till yesterday that I really was miserable for a good deal of the time last year. And now, when things are going so incredibly, unbelievably, unexpectedly well, and I don't have to brave my way through everything, I can say, Man that sucked.

I mean, don't get me wrong. God was there, all the way through it. The ladies at Ann Taylor (none of whom work there anymore; the wonderful women who took me in as a surrogate daughter and sister have been replaced by toothy, snotty sharks who only want your dollars -- if they can tell right off the bat that you have dollars) gave me a place and a kind of family. But I was under several burdens, constantly and simultaneously: feeling inadequate in a sales job; feeling pressure to bring in more money or lose my job (this was from the upper management, not the management in my store); feeling despair at having to work so hard doing something that my personality and field of education didn't suit me to do.

So when I walked out of the mall after my three-hour table-sitting shift, I felt slightly sick -- poisoned, even. (The only upper was buying an ADORABLE mug at Gloria Jean's.) And on the way home, out of the blue, I called The Meg Formerly Known as Boss and audaciously invited myself to her charming house in Michigan for the afternoon. (It's harder to invite a married couple over to my small apartment when they have a real house with things like yardwork to do on Saturdays, when on Saturdays the height of my activity is maybe walking the dog next door.) So I drove up to Michigan -- and every time I drive to their house, even after eight months, I still need a refresher on directions; the generally decent map in my head abandons me when I cross the Michigan border -- and we went antiquing.

Antiquing was the perfect antidote to the mall. We poked around stalls in this big warehousey low-ceilinged building exclaiming over chairs, glassware, pots, lamps, chests, benches, stained glass windows. I fell in love with an old unstained kitchen chair, carved for comfort. And the woman who waited on me at checkout gave me a stranger's unexpected high praise. She asked if I were a student, and when I said no, she said, "Oh, let me guess what you do. I like doing this. Hang on -- I'm trying not to stare -- you're really lovely, you have wonderful teeth -- okay, let me guess what you do..." And she guessed wrong (lawyer's assistant), but when I told her my real job, she said, "Oh, you'd be really good at that, you have this warmth about you, it draws people. Some people give off this vicious vibe, but you're not vicious." And in the process of ringing me up, she found out I was funny to boot, and when Meg and I left she called after me, "Good luck, you're wonderful!"

It was a little crazy, but really nice. It purged the mall-poison from my system.

So then Meg and I went home and had an excellent dinner with Meg's husband Phillip (grr, I can never remember if I'm spelling his name right, I hope that's it -- Philips/Phillips are as picky as Sarahs/Saras when it comes to spelling), and then we went to see the local high school's production of The Wizard of Oz for which Meg and Phillip had done a lot of set work, and which Phillip was stage-managing. It was insanely cute, and the show was completely stolen by the cutest little four-year-old girl Toto anyone has ever seen. At several points there were at least twenty people onstage doing well-rehearsed dance numbers, and all eyes in the audience were fixed on this sweet little Toto doing her enthusiastic, unselfconscious level best to follow along. I kept whispering to Meg, "I can't take it. I want one."

So it was charming, and the set work, despite Meg's disappointment with the final result, was great. Oo and the Oz costume was amazing -- modeled after Western Native American dance costume, it featured a huge, frightening mask head on a frame several feet above the actor's head, from which flowed long loose robes, making Oz look enormous. There were also creepy metal claw-hands. Fantabulous.

It actually makes me want to see the Judy Garland version again. I haven't wanted to see that, even remotely, in ages.

So it was a good day. And tonight I'm planning on attending a Chinese lit conference at Notre Dame, and tonight's program features Maxine Hong Kingston reading some of her work -- I'm outrageously excited.