That’s me. Wanter. I always want more, the next thing, the change of pace, the change of place. I have the hardest time with silence, with growing older, with the quiet rhythms of a predictable life.
It’s a Friday night and my spouse Janyce is at one end of the couch and I’m at the other. It’s been a long week of workmen traipsing in and out, ladders left blocking the small hallway, the two of us squeezing by each other, carrying our laptops back and forth from one room to the other, negotiating who gets the desk with the lamp and work chair and who will stand at the kitchen island for the next Zoom call.
“We should break out the scrabble game,” I say.
“Let’s do it,” says Janyce.
We clink our glasses together, filled with ice and bourbon, and lean back into the pillows on either end of the couch.
I look around the room, take a sip of my drink, and choose a few letter tiles from the red bag. The light outside has swiftly changed from late afternoon angled sun to a dusky bluish tinge. I got up moments ago to light the beeswax candle in the hurricane lamp on the table. Now we’re both feeling lulled by the remains of the cocktail in our glasses and the smoky sound of Friday night jazz playing from the flatscreen TV on the wall.
A friend of mine sent me a New York Times article the other day on this new mental health state called languishing. I keep seeing references to it in various newsletters and other articles in my inbox. “Languishing” it says, “is the neglected middle child of mental health, the void between depression and flourishing and the absence of well being.”
I had to look up the actual definition of the word “languishing” because all I could think of was the word “languid” and the warm, slow, effortlessness that word conjured up in my mind. I thought about the languid amber bourbon sloshing around in the chilled glass I held in my hand.
We’ve been too busy and too tired to pay much attention to this phenomenon and I suspect it may only be of concern for one of us, anyway. Janyce has made the best of this pandemic year. She manages to get up most mornings and do a workout in whatever house we’re in, and always finds a way to make a new routine to the day. She generally enjoys the predictable progression of her long career in finance and is usually —even when she is ranting about something not quite adding up on a spreadsheet— pretty content with her life. I think in some ways it’s because she doesn’t derive her energy from other people. She is restored by silence and alone time and the surety of numbers. We couldn’t be more different in this way.
I fidget with my letter tiles, moving them around to make a word. I pick one up, hold it aloft for a second and then put it back down again, studying the board. The word “wanter” jumps out. That’s me. Wanter. I always want more, the next thing, the change of pace, the change of place. I have the hardest time with silence, with growing older, with the quiet rhythms of a predictable life. I look up from my tiles and over at Janyce. She has her back straight, sitting upright on the couch with her scrabble tile holder in one hand and her eyes closed. I laugh out loud at the prospect that she has fallen asleep upright while waiting for me to make my move and find the perfect word. It makes me think of one of my favorite Gwendolyn Brooks poems.
The Bean Eaters
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering ...
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
I love this poem so much for it’s simple use of language, for the specificity of a word like “chipware”, for the list of mundane items that both paints an instant visual picture of a moment in time, a room, and an era, and also itemizes a long life. Beads, receipts, dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
We’ve been amassing a long list of receipts ourselves lately as we purchase, pack up and transform Janyce’s parents’ thirty-plus years of life in the family cottage— several decades filled with dolls and cloths, old chairs and lamps, and vases and fringes. Now, we’re finding new homes for old objects, and dusting off fading memories even as we visualize the new ones to come.
I look at the time on my smartphone on the table. It’s 9:30. And we’ve been up since 5:30 this morning. The scrabble game can wait till Saturday morning coffee. I don’t know if I’d call what ails me lately as languishing so much. But I do know that as we close out this winter project that has held all of our attention, and we approach the next phase of the pandemic, that I’ll be searching for the next thing. And the next right word to describe it.
Love this, Kris!❤️
You nailed it - this was so good. I feel your “languishing” and “wanter.” I am with you. Thank you for letting me know what I was feeling.