THE LAUNDRESS AND THE ROSE
October 31 2014 THE LAUNDRESS AND THE ROSES
ome days the need to write comes not from having something urgent to say but rather from the urgent need to locate the answer to an unformed question. Or, as the essayist Lewis H. Lapham wrote :“The essay proceeds from the question ‘What do I know’ and doesn’t stay for an answer until the author finds out what he/she means to say by setting it up in a sentence, maybe catching it in a metaphor.”
It is this alchemy inherent in language for which I search today, and as when confronting a tangled ball of string, I reach for the end nearest at hand, the end which beckons to one’s sleight of hand, or in this case, mind. It is the word ‘metaphor’, the caboose of Lapham’s sentence above, which seduces me now; metaphor itself having a tendency to superficial art. And what cheekier metaphor exists than “a rose is a rose is a rose”? Thank you, Gertrude Stein.
I started my day with a thigh cramp. Have you even had one? I’ve had cramps since childhood, just about everywhere from fingers to toes, most often in the calf. None of them fun. But a piece of cake compared to a thigh cramp. In place of a metaphor let me use a simile: a thigh cramp is like back labor without the reward of giving birth. To awaken into consciousness only to immediately wish to die, seems incomparably cruel.
However, if the difference between a metaphor and a simile is the word “like” as in “my love is like a red, red rose,” (Thank you, Robert Burns) as opposed to “All the world is a stage,” a metaphor courtesy of Shakespeare, then the pain of a thigh cramp would be a metaphor because it ain’t like anything, it just bloody is !
I was already heading toward despondency this week, having heard nothing from the agent to whom my novel was submitted weeks ago. Add to this the now 6 weeks-long attempt at gaining residency here in Italy and one has the perfect atmosphere of failure to thrive. Put a thigh cramp in there and you are truly f—ked.
The only options when in such a stifling state are either to pick up my pen or the laundry. I’ve taken to cheating a little lately, now that the season makes line-drying bed linens an iffy business. So we drove into the village to run some errands one of which was to pick up the freshly laundered sheets. And I do mean fresh. The laundry/dry cleaner’s sits in the old wall of the village and is run by a woman perhaps in her 50’s whose harrowed brow no iron could ever smooth. On either side of the shop, behind the counter, are racks of exquisitely dry-cleaned vestments and stacks of neatly packaged laundry. Through the rear window of the shop, dozens of sheets can be seen, as varied as wildflowers, blowing in the breeze of the courtyard.
I’m embarrassed to say I have not yet asked her name, although I have told her that her work is superior to any of its kind I have found in any city. I sense that worry is innate to her, as is patience, the latter of which she exhibits with her 3 year-old granddaughter whom she is invariable tending along with the laundry. Perhaps it is this combination of worry and patience that presses into the linens, the immaculate state of which elicits a gasp of surprise and joy every time I open the package; the surprise being that these really are my sheets, and the joy coming not only from the fact that I didn’t have to do the work, but that such work emanates a quiet dignity and genuine respect.
I was already humbled as we drove away and perhaps only when humbled can we recognize the dignity inherent in all things humble.
We stopped at the intersection to make our right turn, an intersection we’re 19 years acquainted with and never before remarked upon. On the far left corner, a consortium; on the far right a house, its iron fence less than 2 feet from the traffic. And there like a sentinel by the front door stood a sturdy evergreen shrub, quite proud of its substantial self, it seemed, while in front of it, on a single cane, one pale pink rose nodded at every passing car.
I knew I was looking at a metaphor, but couldn’t break the code. All day the image of the mighty shrub and the delicate rose kept appearing in my mind’s eye. I’m pretty sure I saw the rose first, but just as I was about to surrender to its marvel I saw that damned evergreen. It’s self-importance annoyed me, as does my own. Standing there at the portal as if its pride of place made it relevant. But it was the rose that took my breath away; a metaphor of existence on that shabby corner. A singular thing of courageous beauty. Un-cowed by a season of inhaling exhaust fumes, it seemed to say, “Thrive where you must; stand tall in your essential self.”
Soon its petals will fall and who can know if it or we will see another spring? The owner of our bar café in the village died on Thursday, an aneurism. 57. Sitting at his desk. Pen in hand. Our dear Vincenzo, the farmer, had emergency surgery this week for appendicitis. Evergreen, or rose, laundress or writer, barman or farmer; we each have our time on earth. Life is not the simile that Forrest Gump cloyed us with. It is not like a box of chocolates. Nor is it the metaphoric bowl of cherries. It just is. It has no absolute meaning.
The beauty of the metaphor, as opposed to the simile, which merely substitutes one word for another, is that metaphor is pure, personal meaning. The laundress and the rose validated what is meaningful for me: to inhabit one’s self in a way that is of service to others in those moments when the meaninglessness of life fills us with grief.
