The Women in the Woods are Fey and Strange

In which my retirement plans are revised, again, by committee...

I can always tell when Boudica dislikes an idea of mine, because she immediately praises it. My daughter is twelve years old, willowy and tall and, to my disinterested estimation, a creature of unearthly beauty. She is also distressingly charming.

For instance, if I ask her to empty the dishwasher, she will look at me fondly and, smiling with warmth and love, tell me it’s a wonderful idea, and that my orderliness is a trait she most admires in me.

“You always like a clean kitchen, Dadda. And you always want me to do my best.” She pauses, tilts her head, and her long-lashes flutter, and adds: “I think that is why I am doing so well in school. Three A’s for the difficult subjects, and three B’s for the easier ones.

“But difficult things,” she adds, still smiling, and now winking at me, “are what we St. Gabriels do best, don’t you think?”

“Boudica,” I say. Then I pause: “Wait, what was I going to ask you?”

I haven’t forgotten, I just sometimes find it interesting to see how matters play out with her.

She frowns, as if struggling to recollect. “Something about ice cream, I seem to recall. But you know something? When Hattie goes to bed,” — Hattie is her ten-year-old sister — “we should sit up and watch The Good Place. And eat ice cream, if you like. You deserve an evening off.”

Sometimes, when Boudica is talking to me, she presses her palm against my cheek, and her eyes dart admiringly about my face, as if she’s just soaking in my natural handsomeness.

There has been nobody like Boudica in my family for countless generations. I’ve met all her aunts and great aunts, her two grandmothers, even two of her great grandmothers, and they each lack ‘tact’ as conspicuously as war veterans sometimes lack limbs.

In place of charm, they have brusqueness. They are impatient with small talk or delicacy. Somehow, they find it more unique or original to be unfiltered in their remarks, and will always be there should you ever need an unsolicited opinion. These are women who speak their minds, ruffle feathers, and tread on toes. And afterwards, they absolve themselves with the following, churlish qualification: “I’m just saying.”

And if the phrase proves insufficient, they dismiss it all from their minds as someone else’s problem. But if feeling well-disposed towards society, they will draw deeply from that vast reservoir of maternal wisdom and remind everybody within earshot not to be so sensitive.

Of course, there are some good people in the extended family — optimists, mostly, who married in without thinking it through. A couple of the cousins are positively nice. My nieces also show promise. One of them likes to climb on rooftops to catch pigeons, which in my estimation is a signifier of future greatness.

Anyway, after meeting my wife’s relatives and comparing them against my own, I worried that if we had children, they might be born with no capacity for tact whatsoever. It made me think: perhaps we should adopt? But then, heedless of my misgivings and better judgement, we succumbed to the demands of evolutionary psychology and had a baby.

Boudica started complimenting me almost as soon as she could talk. I remember when she was three, she told me, “That’s some good parenting, Dadda,” after I consented to buy her a blueberry muffin from Starbucks. Throughout her childhood, Boudica has believed in giving me positive feedback on my decisions, wherever warranted. I found it disconcerting.

But I was, after all, unaccustomed to this. My mother didn’t compliment me as a child, out of concern it might weaken me or turn me into one of those men who talk about emotions, or something. I wrote a newsletter a few years ago about how she praised a cake I made, an incident which made me wonder if she might have received some distressing news from her doctor.

So, Boudica is tactful and she compliments me. She also promises to buy me sushi every single day — you know, when she is fully grown-up and fabulously rich, and married to a beautiful heiress. I lament that I will have to wait another decade, at least, for all that sushi, just as I lament never having the common sense to realize I might have married a wealthy heiress. In so many respects my daughter is ahead of me.

It also occurs to me that this promise of endless sushi could be a ruse. Potentially, none of Boudica’s promises will come to anything, and perhaps she would say anything to stay up late with me and watch The Good Place. These are the uncertainties with which I must contend.

The trouble is, I don’t have a retirement plan. My children arrived at the most expensive moment in history to have children, so if Boudica’s promise of a lifetime supply of sushi doesn’t pan out, I may be in trouble. I feel myself increasingly concerned about money. My wife is the breadwinner, though I paid for groceries last week through this Substack. Writing these newsletters is my job. My dream is to write these constantly, and publish a few times a week; but Boudica and Hattie will need to cooperate.

Funny thing is, I expected to be alone by now. Like so many men since the dawn of time, I have never wanted to do anything so much as retreat into the woods, with nothing but an axe and the company of a good dog, and live out the rest of my days on some wild frontier. And possibly, even, grow a beard.

Marriage, I assumed, was a temporary aberration in a man’s life. It seemed to me that my wife had married me in a fit of optimism, and that she’d leave once she got to know me better. Or, possibly, keep me around for when she needed a spider removed from the house. But in recent years — since the incident with the spider in the bathtub — my wife has been removing spiders from the house all by herself, which made me wonder how much time I have left.

The Invisible Spider Trick

All the same, she did task me with removing Jeremy the Lizard from our kitchen and I have not successfully managed to do this, yet.

“I nearly stepped on Jeremy again, today,” my wife says about once a week.

To which I reply, sullen and downcast: “Well, he’s very quick!”

I cook most meals, I shop for groceries, and I remonstrate with — I want to say children though what I really mean are actual Beings of Pure Mischief. I don’t know how much longer this will be my job. I assume my eventual retreat into the woods — with an axe and a good dog, etcetera — is fast approaching. Presumably, I will be living on elk or deer, or whatever it is that hermits eat these days.

Meanwhile, I go out on long walks to reacquaint myself with the feeling of life without children (messing with my mind all the time), then return home to a crisis. For example, the girls decided to make ‘puffy pancakes’ when I was out, but something went awry, and there was shouting and accusations, and tears and threats, and then, before I was halfway into the house, hugs and forgiveness. My wife, who’d been hiding in her study, emerged and staring daggers at me, went on about the immorality of my leaving her alone with them.

Remarkably, my wife still seems fond of me. Which means that if, tomorrow, I decided to walk out into the woods with only an axe and the company of a good dog, she would probably want to come with me. But we can’t leave Hattie and Boudica behind to face Society on their own. I have enough problems without having the Fall of Civilization on my conscience. This means I’d be venturing into the woods with an axe, a dog, and — it hurts to type these words — a wife and two daughters, each talking at me and giving me direction.

So, now we’re all in the woods, and Hattie is being loud and this is vexing her mother, and giving her a headache. Which means I must keep Hattie and Boudica entertained while my wife slips away, ostensibly to work, but probably to read an improving book. And thus everything is now as it once was, except we’re in the woods, and I’m still expected to cook people dinner.

And, meanwhile, I expect Hattie would be attempting to teach the dog how to swear. You wouldn’t think it possible, but if anyone can do it, it’s Hattie. She would also have practiced her innocent looks so that after dinner, after the dog has sworn at me, she might say, half convincingly:

“Where did he learn how to say that? I certainly didn’t teach him that!” Then, she’d gaze pointedly at her sister.

“Don’t look at me! I never swear!”

Which is true, but nonetheless:

“Go ahead, Boudica,” Hattie would say with a sigh, “Tell your lies...”

This may not have happened yet, but it tends to be how matters proceed. I am no longer nourished by the joy of parenting; there is a lot of repeating sentences like ‘brush your teeth’ and ‘don’t leave that there’ and ‘don’t cut your sister’s hair with a blender because — why? Because it’s a blender!’

It is no longer fulfilling. I want to do this — write newsletters — and I need the progeny to settle down and let me live my life a little. But if I say those words, ‘Live My Life’, they start singing; evidently, it’s a line from a song by Rihanna. Reader, these are not serious people.

If this was a Hallmark movie, I am now four minutes in, and looking exhausted, carrying baskets of washing past my children, who are playing video games. I’m five minutes away from lunch with a sort of sassy gay friend who is admonishing me to reclaim control over my life. Which makes me precisely nine minutes from a montage that sees me shopping for business casual, and looking concernedly at the receipt.

After that, I’m walking through a nest of cubicles saying hello to my new colleagues, all talking aggressively into headsets, and eyeing me with wariness and evidently affronted by my friendliness. Soon, in this Hallmark movie, I’ll be bringing along baked goods and winning people over with my loveable disposition. There’ll be this whole theme in which I teach some folk some things — in my case, how to hack photocopiers, or systematically terrorize middle-management types. I am still me, after all.

Still, I don’t think Hallmark makes movies about men entering this phase of life. And ever since I wrote the first satire of working life at Harvard University, I have probably been ‘blacklisted’ by human resources departments at every major university in the world.

Except, I already know what my purpose is, and that’s to write these newsletters as often as possible, and let me tell you — it’s a wonderful purpose. It’s difficult to express what this all means to me.

Mike from MA wrote to me this week and shared an anecdote, which I read aloud to my wife, and made her almost fall over laughing. I heard from Amy, who has tried to renew her paid subscriber status at Substack and had trouble making the payment go through; she used to comment on my posts, back when Wrongcards had a Facebook page, like, fifteen years ago.

Robert M. wrote recently; he first wrote to me when I published The Harvard Skull Fiasco. There’s Carrie W, in the North East, who is lovely and funny. There’s Pat. And a certain Reverend W. And Peter in Wales. Rick in Ecuador. And George in Boston, last year, sent me a funny-but-vexing tale concerning a shrunken head. There’s Pete T. There’s Pete M, who wrote this brilliant story about taking a ferry with his son. A bloke in Germany who reads my newsletters out at the kitchen table, to his family. And I’m fond of a certain agricultural journalist who writes occasionally.

There are some, like a couple in Arizona who own a border collie named Bo, for whom I feel a strong, intuitive sense of connection. There are dozens of others, familiar names who comment on my posts at Substack, and many I won’t name but know who they are, I hope — these folk bring me much joy, as well as a feeling of familial kinship, and I’m unsure they even know it. Because if you’ve read down this far, it means that you and I share a sense of humor. It’s a special bond, and I’m glad and grateful you’re here with me.

And I like having all these penfriends scattered around the world. I sometimes write back the craziest replies. I’m a bit intermittent — demanding progeny, as you know — but I do love this job, and this is all I want to do.

You, Reader, just being here is the support I need. You can drop me a line occasionally, let me know how you’re getting along, if you like. You can upvote or like my posts at Substack (and appease the Sacred Algorithm) and share the posts you like with friends and enemies alike; these are good ways to support me, at no cost to yourself. And some become my paid subscribers — I really have no words for what a difference this has made to my life. Don’t feel obligated, just know you’re touching my heart and enabling me to pay for Boudica’s ice cream.

Sure, these are some dark times, but I plan to be with you through it all. If anything goes wrong, then I guess we’ll all run into each other, out there in the woods with our axes and our dogs.

With heartfelt and chaste affection,

Kris St. Gabriel