Patchwork Wisdom
It’s a bad idea to leave an open box of thumbtacks on your crowded desk, especially if you write sideways like me, with your elbow sticking out. Sip your coffee after two sugar packets before you commit to a third. Always carry around a black ball-point pen that won’t bleed or smear. Don’t wear socks on hardwood stairs or marble floors, turn on the lights when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night—we’re prone to bruises and brittle bones. You’d like a dog but keep it away from chocolate and grapes and onions, don’t send lilies to cat people. Don’t let your mother chop all your hair off the day before you start the sixth grade. Cook microwave dinners for a minute longer than it says to on the box. Actually read the cookbooks I left in the kitchen—they’ve never been opened.
Never trust a book’s back cover, I suspect they’re written by car salesmen—Jane Austen was never taught punctuation, Catherine Earnshaw dies halfway through so what’s the point? Don’t take up the oboe, I left my guitar in the attic and there’s still a red pick and a tuning fork in the case. You’ve heard me play it, you sang along to This Land is Your Land. Put chemistry goggles under your hair so it’s not creased and twisty the rest of the day. Bring extra triple-A batteries and a box of yellow number two pencils for the SATs, maybe more if you like the way they smell too. When you stay up too late vacuuming the eraser shavings under your desk or color-coding your plastic binders—and I know you will—do not think that you can rest one eye at a time in class. Do your best to live in the vicinity of a Staples or an Office Max. Get a D once, once, just to prove to yourself that the sun will still rise the next day, that your alarm will go off and you will eat your cheerios and brush your teeth and live.
Whenever you start to cry pretend to yawn, a stretch-your-arms-over-your-head kind of yawn, it’s a good excuse. If you don’t outgrow your shyness, get a job and let a fat red-faced boss yell at you until the day you start laughing on your ride home from work. Then you know you’re cured. Don’t look at the needle when you get flu shots, trust that the nurse won’t miss. Find friends who will share their gum and know how to French-braid, who will remember your strawberry allergy and won’t ask to copy your history homework. Keep a special calendar just for birthdays. Watch Gone with the Wind when you’ve had a bad day, but steer clear of the Scarletts.
Never feel too mature to visit your parents, to throw a softball on the lawn with your dad and let your mom ask you how your day was. Let them be over-protective and embarrassingly fretful—but after the funeral never let your mother dress you because she does not understand how to mix patterns. Don’t come visit me, don’t leave flowers near the headstone and stand in the middle of the cemetery wearing the black dress I sewed you and cry. I’ll be bobbing somewhere in the air around you like the ghost of a buoy, because my heaven will be a beach with no rainy days. I’ll watch you squint at my tiny handwriting, and you will remember that I dropped dishes and messed up two plus two and wore mismatched gloves in winter. And I hope that some of my flaws got stuck in your hair and in your ears and on the bottoms of your shoes, I know your mess-ups will be stunning.
