Monday, March 5, 2012

Gossip and Coffee Cake

I am listening to 'Mansfield Park' by Jane Austen.  I'll listen to the whole thing out of obligation to the classics, but I'm not enjoying it.  I know that lots of Jane Austen admirers would cry out in protest that this may be her greatest book after 'Pride and Prejudice.'  I don't deny that she was a gifted writer.  I really don't.  I just hate having to sit quietly and play whist among so many mindless and tiresome characters.  I know that's the point.  If I work at it, I can see that it really is well done. 
'Mansfield Park' reminds me of when I was a kid in the 1960s and women used to drop by for a visit with my mother over coffee and cake.  It was her responsibility to have cake available whenever they decided to come.  That was the only part of it that I liked.  It was also her responsibility to sit and chat until the women had decided they were done visiting and stood up to leave regardless of how long that took.  While these women were there, I had to sit up straight on the couch and not fidget.  I was never even allowed to sit on this couch at other times, so the couch itself began to represent some form of punishment.  Sometimes, if I was lucky, the women would take pity on me and send me outside to play after I'd eaten my cake, but only when they wanted to talk plainly about who was cheating with whom or which one drank too much at the most recent cocktail party.  The parts about which woman had spurned another was not too much for me to sit quietly and hear.  I could instantly tell who was the target of the gossip by determining who was missing, who hadn't been invited to drop by with the others.  It was a nasty game.
I'm so glad people don't just drop in that way any more.  I missed piano lessons, 4-H meetings, and games of jump rope and tag outside.  Oh, I still hear these kinds of conversations occasionally, but I'm no longer required by courtesy to wait for them to talk it all the way through, assuming I have nothing better to do than to serve cake and listen.  I did have to sit through one such conversation the other day with a woman I don't know very well.  I won't even give this woman a name, but occasionally, I am still called to sit quietly until someone is finished talking about someone else.  Sometimes, I have the courage to redirect the conversation away from gossip by asking what book she is reading.  This woman wasn't reading anything and was not about to be deterred, despite my lack of participation. 

At those times, I remind myself to be careful because I saw how the neighborhood gossip could be so treacherous when I became that seen-and-not-heard child.  I remember how one woman would visit one day and talk about someone, then a few days later, the woman who'd been gossiped about would come to call and talk about the first.  It was a dicey game my mother played to stay out of the middle of it.  The worst part was that it all appeared to be about nothing.  If I hadn't been lucky enough to be excused, I would sit with my eyes unfocused, praying for the woman to finally stand up and ask for her coat.  It seemed interminable.  My mother didn't allow me to stare at the clock.  I wasn't allowed to stand up myself to initiate an ending.  I couldn't yawn.  God forbid that I suggest that I had a piano lesson and that we needed to leave if we were going to be there on time.  No, my job was to wait. 
So, sitting through an audio book in which these same gossipy women could come to visit for weeks or months on end rather than simply for a few hours is not my idea of a good time.  I suppose I could go sit on my couch, but I would have to sit up very straight and remember not to stare at the clock.
Thank you for listening, jb

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