Pins And Needles: Spending Our Tips
Gloria MacKay read about an indepenent old maid whose favourite pastime was "Spending my tips''.
That set her musing on some of the "tips'' she has accumulated through life.
"Spending our tips, like spending anything else, is as much a matter of style as supply. From the start, some children pocket their allowance and spend it as fast as it takes to get to the store. Others can't wait to drop their coins in their bank, and there they stay. A jiggle, a peak and a clink is enough of a tip for them....''
And the best tip for Open Writing readers is, after enjoying this column, to sample more of Gloria's satisfying words by clicking on Pins and Needles in the menu on this page.
Wisdom, like a crocus in a crack of concrete, pops up in the most unlikely places. For this reason, once I gather in the newspaper and digest the morning news along with coffee and toast, I speed read the obituaries, slowing down for the photos and lingering over an occasional phrase.
Most of my skim-overs end up as unproductively as thumbing through a dictionary for words that haven't happened yet, but on rare occasion my eyes track back. This time it was the face of a woman with raised eyebrows, dangling earrings, a quizzical smile and very curly hair. She died on August 16th, the day after my birthday. She was ninety-one years old.
The words, also, merited more than a glance. She once went on tour in an all-girl banjo band. She once was a waitress at the Brown Derby, a star sprinkled Hollywood restaurant. Most recently (fifty years most recently) she lived in my city, her working decades spent waiting on tables. On her own time, she liked to visit fine restaurants, and loved to do lunch with family and friends. Nice, but getting pretty ho-hum for my traveling eyes.
Obituaries usually fill space with comments from the living, but this one showed up with a quote from the deceased. She referred to herself as "an independent old maid." I chuckled at her candor, but this was not what I was looking for. Not wisdom. It was her next words that popped out like the crocus in the crack. Her favorite pastime? "Spending my tips."
I took a closer look at this independent old maid: raised eyebrows, quizzical smile, dangly earrings and glistening curls. Coupled with her banjo and her quick way with words this had to be a foxy woman. She had lived so many years and done so many things she must be referring to something more than small change.
My eyes marked time while I pondered. She was talking about precious memories: good times, good people, good places. "Tips" is as good a term as any to describe the unexpected pleasures that money can’t buy. (To be fancy, one could dust off "serendipity" that word from the fairy tale about the three princes from Serendip who had more good luck than leprechauns in a field of four-leaf clover, but if I bump into an esoteric word in an obituary, my eyes skim along double speed.
"Spending my tips" are words I understand as clearly as if I said them myself. We can spend this kind of tip again and again and again; all we have to do is remember.
I remember when I woke up in the middle of the night, opened Eucalyptus, a novel by Murray Bail, and read until the end and the night had disappeared. Even more gratifying, not many people I talked to cared for the book, but I loved it. An unexpected pleasure, just for me.
I remember sitting in my slippers (again, in the middle of the night) on a bench on an Alaska ferry headed for Skagway. The boat huffed, puffed and twisted along the Wrangell Narrows, weaving through a twenty-three mile string of Christmas lights. When I want my own personal fairy tale, there it is for the taking.
One of my tips is the memory of my grandchildren, all four scarcely old enough to rise from the carpet and walk, bouncing naked like shiny bubbles though the house after sharing a steamy rose scented bath.
Shalimar perfume evokes my stately carrot-redheaded Aunt Cecilia coming to Christmas dinner wearing a kelly green silk suit with patent leather shoes and purse to match. From there to the aroma of the calamari I savored at a restaurant: little rings so tenderly seasoned and gently sautéed it was like eating fog (and to think I might have ordered the chicken fried steak.)
Spending our tips, like spending anything else, is as much a matter of style as supply. From the start, some children pocket their allowance and spend it as fast as it takes to get to the store. Others can't wait to drop their coins in their bank, and there they stay. A jiggle, a peak and a clink is enough of a tip for them.
That’s the kind of a kid I was. The person I still am. If it were not for the wisdom of an "independent old maid" I might still have my tips buried like a twenty dollar bill in an old purse. Safe but forgotten.
Reading between the lines is where the unexpected pleasures are. Like those elusive four leaf clovers, it helps if you know where to look.
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Gloria MacKay
glomac@comcast.net
