Needful Things

There are all kinds of words that bear translation. For me one of the hardest words is "need". I've spent a lifetime trying to define the difference between "need" and "want", and it isn't as easy as it sounds. For example, I "need" a pair of shoes when mine are separating at the seams, hurt so much I can't wear them without limping or get offered money for a new pair by a sympathetic stranger. By the time I need a new pair of shoes, mine are ready for the trash bag.



For many people, needing a new pair of shoes means needing a pair that goes with the dress they just bought which they also needed simply because it was on a good sale. They have no place to wear it, no shoes that match it and already own 50 other dresses, but they need it at that great price and so they buy it. I recently was trying to find a coat for someone who didn't own even one and so asked a person who had 20 or more coats hanging in the closet if they might have one to spare. The response was, "No." they "needed" all the coats they had, even though I hadn't seen any coat get worn for more than one season -- ever.



Some people also need new clothes every couple of years as their body changes. Every time they diet, and this category of person frequently diets, they throw away everything that is now too large and buy a new wardrobe in their new size. Six months later they buy another wardrobe that is the same size as the one they just threw away because they have put the weight back on and everything they own is now too small.



I will admit that at times I feel like I need a new dress. It's usually after someone comments on how they love the dress I "always wear to the cocktail party." It dawns on me that if I've worn the same dress every year to the same event for the past 10 years, that maybe, just maybe, I need a new one. This year I actually own four dresses that are less than 10 years old. I really have been changing weight and so changing sizes. I now three little back dresses in sizes 14, 12 and 10. I can't get rid of even one because I might "need" it if my new weight changes. I do have three other black dresses but they are all over 10 years old and have been worn so many times that every wedding I've ever attended (before this year) has me featured in the photo album wearing the same dress with the same necklace. The only thing that has changed is my hairstyle and facial wrinkles. The reason I have three older dresses is because one is velvet with long sleeves for winter, one is long sleeved with a turtle neck because my daughter thought I needed a new dress after seeing me in the same dress for over a decade, and one is light weight for summer.



Clothing isn't the only thing that varies in importance from person to person. I know people who need new curtains and bedspreads and lamps but don't seem to need to replace the carpet that has holes worn through it. The carpet replacement would cost approximately the same as the new accessories but since it can be covered up with all the new clothes, it isn't a priority. I once had a sister-in-law who would order a new rug from Spiegel’s every spring and fall to put over a bathroom floor that smelled like rot and that sagged when you walked on it. You bet -- I would have ripped up that floor and saved five years worth of carpet money to put down a new one.



I, on the other hand, am constantly in the remodeling mode and am oversensitive to anything in the house that, in my opinion, is worn out. I have a list of needs: new kitchen cabinets (the drawers are held together by tape, glue and metal brackets), new kitchen appliances (the stove can't be cleaned because if you remove the electric units they stop working), new living room window (cracked by a golf ball), new paint in the hallway (necessary once the hole in the wall is repaired), new curtains (the current ones are 18 years old and no long come clean) and the list goes on and on. I'm not much on covering up worn out things -- I like them replaced or repaired. I guess I'm unreasonable that way.



Having things isn't the only difference related to "need". Cleaning is a controversial subject; there are wide opinions on when something "needs" to be cleaned. I need to wash sheets every week, and every two weeks at the longest. I recently asked my granddaughter when she had last changed and washed her sheets, and she replied that she couldn't remember. "Sheets have to be washed!" I told her. "You sweat when you sleep and it's just -- well -- dirty." "But I don't sleep on my sheets," she said. "I sleep on my blanket." "So when was the last time you washed your blanket?" "I don't remember." Yuck.



I also think dishes need to be washed as soon as they are used. They get cleaner faster that way. Nothing is more disgusting than getting up in the morning to dried on food that takes real elbow grease to scrub, not even mentioning the risk of mice, ants and fruit flies. Leave food long enough and you actually scratch the plates trying to get them clean. For me, that would mean I needed new plates since scratches collect bacteria. (See? I really am a little over the top.) I hate plastic anything for that same reason -- plastic scratches and stops being "cleanable."



I "need" to wake up to a neat, if not clean, house. I need laundry put away, empty sinks, flushed toilets, clear surfaces. This particular need creates a lot of problems in my house. But the most controversial thing I need is quiet.



I work at home. Sometimes I'm grading papers, other times I'm revising stories, poems or books already written. For those things I can deal with TV, talking, music, and all the other normal noises that families make. However, when I'm writing, really writing, something new, I need quiet. I can't have people talking to me and pulling me out of the crystal mountain and my 12 year old boy narrator. I can't have someone walk through the room just as I remember, with tears running down my face, that moment I knew I wanted my sick and pain-racked mother to die, or the shock of finding out my husband of 20 years, whom I had stayed with because it was the morally right thing to do, had had not one, but two affairs while I struggled with his constant criticism and temper tantrums. I need not only quiet, but privacy. I need to go to those other places and bring them to life on paper. For this reason, I need an office.



The need for an office that has closed doors, that is mine and mine alone, that is absolutely neat and light and organized, and a computer that cannot be touched by teenagers for any reason whatsoever, has been a real issue. There are people who can't see how this could possibly be a "need." They see it as a self-serving, ridiculous grandiosity. But I do need it. I need it to breathe. I need it so I can stop constantly trying to turn the rest of the house into the kind of space I "need" while they "need" to make messes and leave them there for later in order to feel at home. If I can go away to this private space and do what I "need" to do, maybe I'll be able to ignore some of the things that they "need" to do and that drive me crazy.



The biggest need I have right now is the need to do whatever I'm going to do in this life, and to get it done within the next 20 years. That's how much time I figure I have left, and only that if I'm lucky. When your mother dies, you see that life is short. When your husband dies, you realize that it may very well be a lot shorter than you ever imagined possible. When you turn fifty, you start attending funerals for, not only your parents and aunts and uncles, but for your friends. And you realize that life is very, very short indeed, and not even vaguely guaranteed.



The argument might be made that life is short, and for that reason maybe the dishes don't need to be washed, the laundry done, the stories written but I disagree. I have fulfilled my obligation to work around what other people consider "needs." This is my last opportunity to fill some of my own needs, and I have learned that no one is going to do that for me. I'm willing to do the work to have what I need. The time is now. So -- if you don't like my dress, it is probably old. I don’t need a new one; I don't see it as important. If you feel uncomfortable because I put things back when you leave them out then don't leave them out or find a place where I don't have a say about such things. But don't expect me to compromise anymore. I have come to a point where I "need" to actualize some of the things I've been "wanting" all along.