Basements and Water

I like basements.  I like basements the way some people like newly remodeled kitchens with custom-made cabinets, granite counter tops and glimmering mosaic tiles with the words “Home Sweet Home” patterned into the backsplash.  A basement is the one room that truthfully recounts a house’s history with lengthy prose instead of sleek sound bites.  I love the smell of an old basement whose beauty hasn’t been tarnished by the modern notion that a cellar impersonating a living room is preferable to one with shiny paneling, stained ceiling tiles, and unadorned flooring. 

When our Realtor first showed my wife and me our future home a decade ago, I knew.  I knew as I descended the narrow stairs, the lilting rhythm of our steps along the creaky floorboards, that this was going to be the discovery to end all searches.  It was love at first scent.  And then scent was backed up by sight.  The basement’s floor dipped and raised inexplicably, it’s contours giving it a feel of a natural cavern rather than man-made perfection; the ceiling tiles displayed just a touch of rusty-colored water stains, not an indication of a failing foundation, but of a family who’s children had splashed too zealously in the bathtub above; the low support beam running along the center of the room was just high enough so as not to require a six-foot man to duck, but it nonetheless prompted me to duck each and every time I passed under as a matter of instinct; the window wells with white cloth curtains were recently vacuumed for the sale, but still showed traces of the spider webs left unchecked for so long.  In the weeks that followed, my wife and I discussed the placement of furniture and how each room was to be arranged, but all I could think of was the ping pong table on the far end of the support pole and a throw-rug on the near-side where I’d set up my old Kenwood receiver and Phillips turntable. 

In recent days, as I’ve watched the destruction in Milwaukee and Chicago, I’ve begun to wonder.  Eight inches of water from the sky – that’s all it takes to make life difficult, as people are forced to discard miles of saturated carpet, piles of drenched drywall and hundreds of sofas, chairs, recliners, toys and boxes.  I hope those who’ve been hit hardest can rebound.  And it makes me wonder if maybe basements aren’t meant to be finished the way we finish other rooms.  All basements, under the right circumstances, will fill with water.  Even the best of them.  Maybe finishing a basement is like building a home along the banks of the Mississippi.

Clutter is Nine-Tenths of our Tension

In 1994 Peter J. Menzel published a book containing photographs of families standing in front of their homes with all their worldly possessions.  The cover of the book presents a family of four on a cul-de-sac with their lovely home behind them and a tidy display of sofas, tables, chairs, dressers, lamps, beds, a piano, bookshelves, photos in frames and every movable appliance, not to mention two cars parked in the driveway and a family dog.  Not shown in the photograph are all the books, papers, tools, binders, boxes, scrap wood, scrap shingles, scrap ANYthing, grilling equipment, pet toys, children's toys, knickknacks, dishes, glasses, snow shovels, power tools and lawn mowers.  In other words, the clutter has been removed from the equation, and what’s left is a display that makes American consumerism look reasonable, orderly and completely healthful.

But clutter is the culprit for much of the exasperation and tension in our lives.  My days are spent piling through bills, party invitations, receipts, CDs, homework, art projects, charity brochures, jumbo-sized paper goods packages from Costco and, more recently, microscopically-sized Legos scattered throughout every room of my house.   If my family and I were to put all our possessions in front of our bungalow, the Legos alone would take us into the next county.   

But despite my toil, I feel like I’ve made strides from the insane saving tendencies of my father. He's a SAVER, as important a word to describe him as husband, father and grandfather.  He's a step away from one of those people you see on Dr. Phil who can’t throw out anything and therefore has thirteen years worth of daily papers piled in his kitchen, or stacks of garbage sorted by matter-types, because you just never know when you’re going to need two-hundred and thirty two Styrofoam egg cartons.

In my father’s basement you’ll find a piece of broken brake line from a ’49 DeSoto that nearly cost him his life in the late 50s, two bedpans and a polio leg brace from his illness in 1949, a urinal that he recently justified having saved for sixty years by using it after knee surgery (I can hear him telling his wife, “See, I KNEW I’d put this to good use.”), papers he authored in college, screws and nails sorted neatly by type in old baby jars, classical LPs, a slew of binders and boxes upon boxes of negatives and prints.  Walking into his basement is like visiting a museum in which nothing is interesting.  Actually, that’s not entirely fair.  I do like his collection of beer bottles, childhood toys, old radios and cameras.  But then there’s the 8-foot by 4-foot model train display he and I worked on over thirty years ago but never finished; it still rests on its side, the plaster mountain we’d so carefully created during the 70s having been accidentally smashed during the move into his present home in 1988.  

My mother, by contrast, is a DISCARDER, and she lives an orderly life in an orderly house with no basement and only enough room in her garage for two cars.  It’s as if each of my parents purchased a home that only exasperated their ailments: my father can surrender to his saving illness because he’s got the room, and my mother can heed her discarding tendencies because she hasn’t got the room to do otherwise.  

Despite the idiom, “opposites attract,” SAVERS and DISCARDERS mix together about as well as water and sodium, and my childhood was therefore marked by two time periods:  the Accumulation Period, when my father’s predilections won out more often than not; and the Dumping Period, when my mother was finally free to listen to her “inner discarder,” starting with anything that contained a hint of my father’s existence.   An art project I brought home during the Accumulation Period likely rests to this very day in a box stored in my father’s basement.  An art project I brought home during the Dumping Period was likely disposed with that day’s dinner scraps.

So where does all this leave me?  I appear to have inherited both the saving and discarding traits to alarming effect: when I save, I’m tortured by a desire to organize and clear away the clutter to give me some semblance of order.  When I discard, I’m tortured by loss, sure that a piece of me has been left to rot in a landfill.  

There are moments when I imagine the sense of liberation that might come if my house were to suddenly burn down while the family is away.  Gone would be any ties to material things that matter nothing in the end: the piano books I learned from as a child, the drinking glasses I stole from an English Pub in 1989, the letters from old girlfriends, the papers I authored during my sophomore year in high school, the first pieces of furniture my wife and I purchased together, the photos, the LPs, the books.  And then I imagine Peter J. Menzel coming over the following day to photograph my family standing arm in arm, smiling proudly in front of the smoldering ashes, where a clutterless hole awaits to be filled by next year’s purchases, tension in waiting.

Friendship Bread Givers: You Ain't No Friends of Mine

On Joe Jackson’s debut album, he scoffs at couples who make finding love look easy, because he knows it to be a painful, confidence-shattering process.  He sings over and over at the song’s end, “You ain’t no friends of mine.”  I’d like to borrow this sentiment and extend the ridicule to all those who gleefully hand out practically empty Ziplock bags to friends and say in a sweet and giving voice, “Here’s a homemaking kit of Amish friendship bread!”  They say it as if they’re the kindest, most warm-hearted individuals on the planet, but the truth is out and it’s beginning to spread: these are actually mean-spirited people who exult in the false hopes and misfortunes of others.

I recently had the honor of receiving the “Friendship Treatment” from Jan, who en route to her yoga class had stopped by to offer me a bag filled with a thick, beige liquid along with a printout of instructions.  “It’s a ten-day process, and we’re already on day four, so enjoy!” she said, practically skipping back to her van, certain that she’d helped to spread a little sunshine in my dim world, and I admit that initially I was flattered: someone had made bread for me!  How thoughtful.  How quaint.  Sure, I bake my own bread every Friday, but this was from a friend (or so I thought) and it involved a process invented by Amish people whose women all like Kelly McGillis and who want nothing but peace, love and understanding.  What could be wrong with that? 

For those who haven’t been indoctrinated into the world of Amish friendship bread, let me explain: the process is basically a pyramid scheme without the financial liabilities.  You start with a few ingredients and mix them in a Ziplock bag.  For the next ten days, you squeeze the bag once a day and add a few ingredients on day six.  Along the way, the concoction ferments and the bag expands.  It’s kind of a cool process, provoking the same scientific fascination one might get from brewing beer at home. 

On day ten, you add more ingredients and divide the mix into four different containers.  One of these will result in two loaves of bread for yourself.  The other three are to be distributed to three friends who will repeat the process, and so on, until every man, woman and child on a planet of six billion has prepared, baked and eaten two yummy loaves of bread.  I have no idea why this process is considered Amish, except that it doesn’t entail any refrigeration or mechanical devices (but what bread-baking process does, unless you’ve continued to use the bread machine you received as a wedding gift back in the 90s?).   

So fine, the whole idea is nice, and my children enjoyed squeezing the bag each day, and I had no trouble adding milk, flour and sugar on day six.  So far so good.  It wasn’t until day ten that I realized just what a scam this bread-making business is.  I learned that none of the previous nine days had been necessary at all, because I now had to empty practically every bag, box and bottle in my cupboard to finish the process.  

Here is the list of ingredients I needed to add on day ten: 

Sugar 

Milk 

Flour 

Oil 

MORE sugar 

Vanilla 

Eggs 

Baking powder 

Salt 

MORE flour 

MORE milk 

Baking soda 

Instant vanilla pudding mix 

Cinnamon 

I’m serious.  Someone had handed me a Ziplock bag and all I needed to do to bake two loaves of bread was add enough ingredients to feed the entire Amish population nationwide.  I’d basically fallen for the Amish version of the story, “Stone Soup,” in which a man tricks a community to cook a big vat of soup by asking each citizen to add his or her own ingredient, except I happened to be a community of one in this version of the story.  I have half a mind to give my friend a Ziplock bag filled with water and say, “Here’s a bag of Amish Friendship Soup.  Enjoy!” 

So please, no offense to the Amish, or the idea of friendship or the makers of Jello-brand instant vanilla pudding, but I’ll pass on this charming and sadistic tradition in the future.  You want to be a friend?  Bring a six-pack of Guinness over sometime, and if you really must include something baked, offer me your thoughts on achieving world peace.