The trick - or one trick

from Uncle Albert's notebook (cahier)

The trick - or one trick - is not to need help too often, which involves a second trick: patience, allowing the time it takes to will your body to do the things it used to do without thought and to put up with how (howlingly) long it takes the will to complete its work. Also to be satisfied - at least to put up with - the shoddy job it does, trusting, for example, that your underwear will fall into proper, comfortable place eventually, preferably before the day is out. Also, it does no good to complain to yourself about what your self can do only so well. That is, unless you can laugh the complaint off, imagine a crabby complaint-desk in a cartoon or a clueless complaint-desk in a sketch: Tim Conway managing it on "Carol Burnett."

I mentioned Polly.* She comes over early on Boxing Day. She leaves our pan of lasagna and picks up Roz to deliver a dozen more. She wears a Santa hat and brings one for Roz. They will be gone all day.
        When they return, they brew cocktails, a blenderful of something white and foamy, and they sit at the kitchen table and . . . . Surprise! - they are talking politics in the dining room, though more about how useless it is to follow them, since there is no changing the "clown minds" of politicians (or pundits). It is Roz's phrase, "clown minds."

When Polly left, I asked her what it meant. She'd doffed her Santa hat for her jovial friend to take home for next year. Her hair was slightly mussed. She looked at me looking at her from the front-room doorway and raised a hand as if to smooth it, but stopped, opened her hand to the air and dropped back onto the table.
        "You overheard?" She isn't accusatory, but curious. Still:
        "I was listening. Sorry."
        "No. It's okay."
        "So?" Meaning "What does it mean, then?" She gets that.
        "You can't stop them from cramming themselves to beyond full into that little car,"
she said.                                                                                                                                   12/27/23
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* About Polly. (Editor's note.) These are two posts almost worth re-reading: "Dateline: Pangloss, CA" and "The Friday Before" (and its conclusion, "A bit of everything.")