For or Against: Living a beautiful life
My life is not beautiful! I have failed my parents and my Instagram.
Somewhere recently I read an essay by a parent who said they hoped their child would have a beautiful life. The idea made me panic. My life is not beautiful, I thought! I have failed my parents and my Instagram.
For example: My apartment does not get enough natural light. I’m lazy about breaking down boxes and opening my mail. I do not like the beige slipcover that my mom insisted on draping over the stained couch. My pillowcases are too small for my pillows, and my pillows are deflated and need to be replaced.
But I do not replace them, because it always seems like $50 is better put toward some other, more urgent expense — groceries or a round-trip Uber ride or monthly pet insurance (the rates keep going up) or the baby’s formula, which costs $34 a can in the U.S. but €18.95 in Europe.
Life is undoubtedly more beautiful in Europe, where the drinking fountains at the center of town are festooned with lions and carved from stone. Did lions ever live in Europe? Once.
If I lived in Europe I would know just how to wind a scarf around my neck. My breasts would be smaller, my skin would be clear. Strawberries would be sweeter. My couch would be velvet. The baby would be just the same. I would appear effortless.
My friend is thinking of moving back to Europe. She tells me she doesn’t want to do it just because it’s cheaper; she wants to do it for a dream. We plotted over miniature martinis, under gaslight-era chandeliers.
The beauty of New York, Milan Kundera writes, is unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern.
I believe New York is beautiful. So why do I think my life is not?
The book Piglet by Lottie Hazell is a kind of horror story about what happens when we care more about how our life appears than the truth of it. The main character resolves to make a croquembouche for her own wedding, which requires assembly the morning of, which is how her guests will know she has impeccable taste and how the reader knows she’s doomed.
I took up cake decorating when my baby was four months old, which is how you know I’m nuts. But I found it soothing to practice piping roses from yellow buttercream. The technique required for so small an act; the flick of the wrist necessary to make the petals bloom.
I do go beautiful places. Prospect Park each day when work is done, my mom pushing the baby in his stroller with its ripped canvas pocket, my dog high-stepping on her rainbow-patterned leash. Walking around my neighborhood in the spring I couldn’t stop taking pictures of dogwoods and magnolias. The sudden joy of it!
My laptop, when I open it each morning, is like a ship’s porthole through which I glimpse the world. Just beyond those pixelated inches: My baby in his anchor-patterned onesie, floating on the carpet’s alphabet sea.