Spendthrift By Laura J. Oliver

I tend to stun myself with new knowledge and ponder the inexplicable, and both seem to be coming at a faster and faster pace. It’s as if I slept through the first decades of my life and awakened just in time to appreciate the gift before I’m required to give it back. (Thank you for letting me visit.) I’ve already given back to life all that I can and will inevitably leave behind that which I most treasure.

Three kids.

But I’ve taken to gobsmacking myself on facts you can only take in by contrast or simile. Like that an atom is comprised of so much empty space it is as if the nucleus is a pea in a football stadium. Which makes us primarily empty space. At our most fundamental level, we are vibrating energy acting in a field of energy. (Is that why you can feel me thinking about you?)

Or if a photon left the sun right this second and began traveling towards Earth at the speed most commercial jets fly, 500 miles per hour, it would take 21 years for that photon to reach the Earth. At the speed of light, that’s only 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Light never stops.

And apples appear red, yet the atoms that comprise them have no color. And if you and your partner were able to conceive every possible combination of eggs and sperm each could contribute, the result would be 7 trillion children, none of whom would be the same.

Has your brain imploded yet?

We have no evidence that fire exists anywhere except on Earth—not on any other planet in the solar system, anyway. Fire requires free oxygen, heat, and something combustible to burn. To date, we have only found those conditions on this planet—not even the sun qualifies as a source of fire. The sun is a glowing ball of gas. You are seeing hydrogen compressed into helium, which sets off the plumes of gas you think of as fire.

Which… thinking about a scorching ball of flaming gas, creating sweltering summers…brings me to my pondering of the inexplicable. Why for the love of God, in a house with no air conditioning, did my parents own only one fan?

 My parents’ aesthetic emphasized beauty and economy. No fake Christmas trees, no purchased birthday cakes or Halloween costumes. No fake flowers. Not fans of plastic or wastefulness. We reused tinfoil, bacon grease, string, paper bags, wrapping paper, ribbon, and eventually, tv dinner trays.

Sandboxes and swing sets were unsightly so they could certainly not be placed between the house and the view of the river but were tucked away in the side yard.

So, beauty and frugality ruled my childhood. But really. ONE fan? Was it just because buying two of anything was an untoward extravagance?

Mr. Oliver’s relatives were relatively well-off citizens of a small southern town. His great-uncle was mayor of Asheboro, North Carolina, and his grandfather was a state senator who was so concerned with appearing extravagant that when he decided to buy his wife a car, he bought one identical in make, model, color, and year to the car they already owned. As if that sneaky bit of business would keep them from being judged ostentatious.

But one fan? It was the size of a dinner plate and rotated. We had to carry it around the house and plug it in wherever we were—eating dinner, watching television—but the real problem was in going to sleep. As the youngest, I went to bed first, upstairs in the southwest corner of the house, where since noon, the descending sun had been heating up my robin’s-egg-blue bedroom with the circus-animal bedspread and the curtains with the ball fringe to a temperature at which you could bake brownies.

I was given the fan to help me nod off—which I tried to do as fast as possible, knowing my older sister was coming to claim it next. When I’d awake sweltering at 2 a.m. and realize she was asleep next door with the fan still purring, I’d lay there sweaty with the injustice of 30 minutes of fan versus the rest of the night and plot ways to sneak into her room to take it back. For the record, this was never, ever successful. The only thing that wakes one up faster than a noise is the sudden absence of a noise. Or the felonious presence of a sister in the dark.

My parents are dead, so there is no one to ask about this bizarre frugality. But when my mother was still alive and ordering dinner off the menu at her assisted living facility, on the evenings they served crabcakes (her favorite and a luxury in this household even now), it would kill me to see her check the entree choice and then write next to it, (2?? Please???). She might as well have drawn a picture of herself wringing her hands with the squeamishness of asking for extra.

It has taken me a whole lifetime to embrace abundance as holy, as permitted and smiled upon. I’m the little spendthrift who has bought more than one hose to water the pink petunias! One for the front yard and (holy cow!) a second for the back, when yes, I could just drag one hose around the house.

I believe consciousness is love, that it is the source of that vibrating energy, and that it is all that is real, ultimately. And on a fundamental level I feel we are all one. But here’s the thing about one versus two.

How do you know you are loved if there is no one to love you? Does love require a beloved? Does love need a recipient to exist?

Anita Moorjani says you’ll never get this until you understand that love is not an energy to pray to, aspire to, or please. You are love itself. All you have to do is recognize your true identity. Stop knocking on the door and realize you are the house.

This is just one more thing I find inexplicable. Because in my heart of hearts, I believe we come into this world wanting only to love and be loved.

And that, my beloved, requires two of us.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.