MY MOTHER called the other day and excitedly announced that she was about to conduct that annual holiday tradition, "picking names." The ritual involves my mother, scraps of paper, and her gleeful assigning of gift-buying duties.
"I was wondering if I should include X," she said, referring to someone I've hung out with about 10 times.
"What?" I asked, lulled into my usual coma by my mother's belabored ramblings. Then I heard the name again and realized what she was asking.
"No," I said sternly, sounding more parental than daughterly. "No!"
"Oh, okay ... I ..." she trailed off timidly. The poor thing keeps trying to get a handle on my inconsistent relationships, only to have her small efforts rudely rebuffed. All it probably meant in her mind was the simple scribbling of another name on a piece of paper and the purchase of one more pair of nondescript earrings that would suit Any Woman. But to me it held far greater significance. It meant my mother had heard this person's name enough to know it from memory. That she had assumed from my enthusiasm that I would be spending holidays with this woman. That we should make her feel welcome by giving her a pretty gift. These, of course, are facts I want revealed to the woman in question about as much as the details of my infamous proctology visit of '94. (I'll tell ya later.)
This is 2007, for God's sake. We're all supposed to be well practiced in the art of apathy. Showing that we care has gone the way of the handwritten letter. Women are the new men. Men are the new barbarians. Stick your 'pods in your ears. Don't hear a thing. And for fuck's sake, don't cry, sissy. We are, as Ben Folds so aptly put it, fighting the battle of who could care less.
Apparently, I'm paying my karmic debt in this department. Somewhere around age 26, I just paused my ability to show people that I care. All the ink I used to waste scribbling love letters and sappy poems dried up. Gifts became less sentimental and more obligatory, constructed with just enough feeling to convey not so much feeling. "I love you's" were sometimes returned with an appreciative and cold "Thank you." What a douche bag I was.
But recently I re-emerged. Now when I look around and assess the situation, I can only pessimistically conclude: people kinda suck.
We're all so busy being busy. Who has time to get to know someone? Who wants to tell that same story about the funny trip to Jamaica? How many more times do I have to talk about my childhood, and where I went to college, and why?
Phone calls are passé and time consuming. Why would I call someone when I can just e-mail them? And e-mails can be so laborious. Why would I e-mail when I can just text? The first time I received a text message from someone I was dating, I responded with this: "Primitive." What a waste of hands that could be wrapped around a coffee mug while you're staring across the table at a new face. (Look how clean I kept that reference to free hands.)
A few weeks ago I handed this girl a manila envelope the size of a business card and asked her to send me something to test our fallible postal service. Not only did she take the time to mail it, but she found a pint-sized card to fit in the envelope and filled it with such niceties that it rendered me both speechless and consumed with writer's block. I imagined myself in a romantic post-WWII setting, where every trip to my rusty mailbox turned up a surprise. Instead, it's a clunky electronic device in my palm, mocking me with its pathetic jingles and 50-character limitations. But it's perfect for us, a fabulous way of conveying that we simply can't be bothered.
I'd always thought that at a certain stage of life, games just ended. You stopped tallying the number of phone calls exchanged and how far apart you've spaced them. You could buy a gift for someone and not worry about her interpreting it as a marriage proposal. You could show that you care about someone even if you knew the two of you weren't going to last more than a few months, might never fall in love, might never even make that unfortunate fall foliage trip together. But we temper ourselves to avoid becoming vulnerable. The most I've been able to muster in the past several months is taffy. Fucking taffy. And I actually turned to my friend when I was buying the paltry gift and said, "Is this too much?"
I now look around my room and see old trinkets of affection with new eyes. The broaches handmade from seashells. Books with funny messages inscribed to curb my writer's block. A thesis thanking me for my "carnal devotion." I'm not sure I appreciated any of it as much as I should have. We always think it will continue. But I have a hunch that in time, these expressions dry up, sapped by bitterness, hindered by insecurity, overlooked in the name of "not enough time." Or maybe age just strips us of that youthful optimism that makes romance fun.
I've considered bucking the emotional trend - giving and giving and giving until I'm broke or chafed, whichever comes first. At least that way it's almost guaranteed that you can feel vindicated when things go ass-up, knowing you gave it your all.
So maybe I should call my mother and tell her to write that name on a scrap of paper after all. It certainly wouldn't be the first time she's had to scratch out the name on a gift and add a new one before putting it under the tree. Then some unsuspecting victim can open it and feel special and tell me how nice it was of my family to think of her.
"It's nothing," I'll say nonchalantly, probably meaning the opposite. "Really." @
Jeannie Greeley is a freelance writer who is not bitter. Really. She can be reached at jeannieg@comcast.net.
[Illustration by Corey Smigliani]
