November comes, and I lean into lists. They get a bad rap from the few who have managed to retain attention spans. These last survivors of homo lector lament our evolution. Our eyes have become beady as bullet points, our stomachs too sensitive for anything but Buzzfeed. We tuck our heads under our own armpits at the distant sound of a paragraph. We skim like dragonflies.
But if someone must defend the list, let it be me. I am poor and needy as any unwinged thing. I step gingerly through November. My father would be one hundred years old at the table. My cat needs a cardiologist. My mother lives three hours away, inside the candy bar of my phone. No matter how many green beans we share, I will never know my uncles. Across the Atlantic, children with eyebrows as bushy as mine squint so they won’t see each other. Upstairs, my neighbor wishes I would stop in the hall and let him filibuster about Amazon and aging. My grandmother knew how to turn ricotta into doxology. I have never baked a cookie.
I cannot digest prose in November.
I sit in the dark, spooning pudding from a plastic cup. I can’t pinch the highways between my fingers, squeezing shortcuts to shunt my mother here in an instant. I can consider the 45 Best Gifts for Men Who Don’t Need Anything. Someone paid and earnest suggests I purchase my men a portable bidet and $45 no-show socks.
The cat with the bad heart turns in my lap, walking a small spiral galaxy before she sleeps. I cannot convince the Board of Directors to mandate sweatpants and sincerity at the company party. I can give thanks that there are 7 Ways Introverts Can Survive Thanksgiving.
Some would say that the lists are anesthetics, fleece jackets to hide jagged edges. They give us a moment of feeling things are manageable. They distract. They pacify us with gumdrops. They ride bareback on our neurons until our IQs slump back to bed.
But they are strings of pearls. They are countdowns that keep us company when all is numberless. Shoulder-to-shoulder, link upon link, they are funny, and sweet, and prophetic under their plastic lids.
The 8 Sweetest Pet Names include “Nougat” and “Shoo-Fly.” The 6 Most Underrated Small Towns include the maple storybook village where my mother writes poems and folds comforters. The 12 Top Bible Verses for the Blues include “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Moses did not predict that we would catalog our gifts or mummify them in tissue paper. Psalms are lists with muscles. They are fiber cookies that keep things moving. A jaunty editor would have packaged them as 150 Reasons Not to Freak the Hell Out Today.
It is already today, here in the dark. I scrawl tasks. TJ Maxx. Supermarket for that pumpkin yogurt that exists just 30 days a year. Write back to half-sister. Write anything worth printing. Wash sheets.
The cat with the crimped timeline lumbers into the kitchen unaware. I don’t believe I have turned on that stove. My grandmother gave fig-filled benedictions called cucidati, “little bracelets.” I will never have children holding out their wrists.
I open a file, my Birthday List. Over twenty years, I have acquired 238 living beings to love. I know when they arrived. I can send lilac envelopes with smiley face stickers. Christmas is coming. I make a list of how many will get wise men and how many will get snowmen who do not impose eternity.
It is late, and it is early, and tomorrow the Board of Directors expects a fundraising plan for the new year. My slides will go down easy, milky confidence they can skim. Bullet points are best.
I need a few more lists before I lie down. There are 30 Reasons November is the Best Month. There are 15 Things You Need to Ask Your Mom. I can Give Thanks for 21 Reasons to Stay Single. I can have psychedelic dreams about 11 Outrageous Cat Breeds You’ve Never Seen Before.
I will rise with knapsacks under my eyes. Neither retinol nor prayer can make me look twenty-eight anymore. I can jot praises.
The staccato stories outdo themselves. The smart set may lament the listification of language, but I am small and needy. Words and numbers warm my hands. I cannot control the brilliance and sorrow. I can count steps and days. I can bump into my neighbors on the scavenger hunt. We wiggle our eyebrows at each other.
Oaks rise. I will ask the Thanksgiving uncles to share three things that made them cry and six, no, seven, things that made them laugh. I will ask the Board of Directors for one moment that felt like fireside. I will add my upstairs neighbor to the card list and write three reasons I think he’s brave. I will make one hundred maple cookies for my mother.
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Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, The Penn Review, The Razor, and Still Point Arts Quarterly, among others. She is a Best Spiritual Literature nominee. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 33 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.
© 2024, Angela Townsend
Halfway Down the Stairs 