Memories From My Desktop

My desktop is a mess. “Desktop” once meant the top of one’s writing table. Surprisingly, that surface in my office isn’t messy. My laptop’s desktop is the problem. (It’s hard to say those two words together.)

Whenever I am at a conference or setting up lectures on a tour, folks actually gasp seeing so many emblems up on the screen. The kinder ones muse: “Poor dear, she doesn’t know how to manage her files.” The others think: “Are you serious? Does this lady not realize how this mess slows down her computer!?“ (I do realize it.) Several factors cause my nearly moral failure in this matter, but primarily I like keeping things close at hand. That policy is fine on a bedside table. It’s counter-productive on a laptop.

Still, the payoff comes when, trapped in a car for example, waiting on a grandchild’s ballet or Taekwondo class, I take a break from writing, grading, or editing and turn to the pleasure of my desktop. On a good day, I might label or eliminate one or two items, but mostly I look at them.

Yesterday, I clicked on an unlabeled picture and found this photo. Sharing this with you is so off-topic (for starters, our anniversary is in November). But I will forge ahead.

Yes it’s Hank and I, taken at our wedding reception in 1994 in the parlor of the old Faculty Club on SMU’s campus. A few of you were there (thank you!). Hank’s sister Kathy said, “Go sit at the piano” and we did. She took the picture. Pretty nice, right? In fact Kathy’s pictures were the only good ones of the whole day, because our hired photographer flaked out early that morning and the last-minute substitute was, well, really bad.

Hank has a fabulous deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, which was entirely appropriate. Had he fully realized the degree to which his orderly life was about to turn upside down (let’s start with adopting six-year-old Helen from Russia 18 months later), he would have run out the door screaming.

Or perhaps he did suspect. Hank is an extraordinarily solid and perceptive person. If you know him, you realize what an understatement that is. In that case, the look on his face is prophetic.

Moving on, what was going on with my hair? The last time that happened was the junior prom. A friend actually put it up and her pleasure in the result was more important than my astonishment. The weirdest part, though, was the nails. For the second time in my life, I had gotten my nails “done.” It was also the last time I would do so. Those ten acrylic appendages poking out from my fingers were itching and driving me nuts.

Still, at that moment, they did look nice, as did the wedding dress, except for the fact that I would never willingly wear what is called a “Juliette gown.” Massive, puffy sleeves are not my thing.

What was my thing, though, was the price tag! I’ve never told this story in public, so here it goes.

Once Hank and I had settled on a wedding ceremony with invited guests (rather than going off somewhere privately), I needed something suitable to get married in. The event inexplicably had grown from a tiny affair to, somehow, 125 invited guests. A dress from my closet wasn’t going to do.

Still, what do you wear when you’re, let’s just say, “older” and way past a traditional bridal dress? The answer is, you buy the one that cost $15.

Yep, $15 dollars. Here’s how that happened.

Panicking as the date grew close, I wandered embarrassedly into a Dave’s Bridal. A kind lady directed me towards the mother-of-the-bride section (a proper call from her perspective, plus the racks looked fruitful). Nothing, though, worked, plus those dresses were expensive.

Sheepishly, I slipped over to the row of real bridal dresses. There they stretched, all the way to the other end of the building: poofy, puffy, huge, billowy, massive, stiff. Raising my eyebrows, I was backing away when a champagne-colored strip of cloth shimmered between two of the clumps of white netting. At first I thought it was some kind of a slip. Extracting it, I saw that it had puffy sleeves and was trying to stuff it back into its prison, when my eye was transfixed by the price tag. (I still have this tag, although I’d never find it by looking for it.) It read like this:

$600
$300
$150
$ 75
$ 15

I crept up to the attendant standing at the cash register, shimmery champagne-frock draped over my arm. “Is this correct?” She scrunched up her nose and turned to ask another person. That person asked another person. The first gal came back and said, “I guess so.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“Don’t you want to try it on?” she asked.

I did try it on. It fit fine (except for those sleeves, which I wanted to rip out.) But overall, whatever I didn’t like paled in comparison to the price. For about six minutes I stood there, surrounded by mirrors in the elegant bride’s dressing room, indulging in princess fantasies . . . until I remembered the plot of Romeo and Juliette and decided to pay my $15 and get out of there.

The dress was beautiful, truly, and well made ($600 was as lot of money in 1994). But the price tag was the best part. Hank had some fun with the story, too, mentioning the fact to a law-firm colleague that this music-history-professor lady he about to marry had gone and bought a wedding dress. The other fellow (recently married in an extravagant wedding) groaned and said, “Do you know how much those dresses cost?” With his wry smile, Hank said “I do,” suppressing the “$15” figure out of compassion.

Well, there it is—a story about one of the picture messing up my desktop. I did label it, by the way. I could put it in a file. Or then again, I might leave it right there on my desk.