A Life Has Specifications

When I try on a dress, I sit down in it. I want to know where the hem goes when I cross my legs and whether the zipper digs into my back. I want to know if I can reach across a table for the salt without having to put a hand over my chest. The dress might be gorgeous while I’m standing perfectly still in a fitting room. I’m buying it for a woman who moves.

I think about that when I consider how many arrangements I’ve agreed to while standing perfectly still, so to speak. A recurring meeting looks perfectly reasonable on a calendar, especially when the calendar belongs to some future version of me who apparently eats lunch by photosynthesis. A friendship can feel close for years before I notice that we’ve spent most of that time talking about her life. I can say yes to a lovely dinner and realize halfway through the appetizer that I would happily pay the full price of the meal to be home in the bath.

Sometimes you have to sit down inside an arrangement to find out where it pinches.

I like the word standard for this. It asks something more specific of me than a wish does. I can wish for a slower life for twenty years. A standard gives me something to work with on Thursday when somebody wants to put a call between the two calls I already have. If I’ve decided I want to eat lunch sitting down, I have an answer. I also have to reckon with how absurdly extravagant that answer can feel when I say it out loud.

Of course, I already had standards. I was raised to have them. I learned to be a good guest, to bring something, and to notice when the host needed help. I also learned to notice when a man at the table was about to embarrass himself and to give him somewhere softer to land. It took me considerably longer to ask how often anyone at the table was doing that for me.

Women get praised for standards that make life easier for everybody in the vicinity. We remember the birthdays. We answer the email with enough warmth that nobody has to wonder if we’re cross. When someone we love is having a hard time, we can supply an astonishing amount of context for the way they just spoke to us. Some of this is care, and I want to keep my capacity for it. I’m more selective these days about which parts of it I’ll make a standing offer.

A boundary is one kind of standard. I decide when I’m available and how much of my time I can give. Behavior is another, and it asks more of me. I expect people close to me to be able to tell me when they’re angry. I expect to be able to listen without making them sorry they brought it up. I also expect us to leave each other’s dignity intact while we fight. When one of us fails at that, I want us to be able to say what we did in plain language. “I was embarrassed and I took it out on you” gives us somewhere to go.

I have standards for friendship, too. There are seasons when one person carries more. I’ve been carried, and I remember who did it. Over the years, though, I want to know the pleasure of being thought of. Sometimes that’s as simple as a friend making the reservation and texting me the time. I get to put on the dress and show up. There’s a whole species of relief in being invited to a thing you didn’t have to make happen.

Then there’s quality. I want to put my name on work I’d be glad to have somebody read slowly. Sometimes that means taking another hour with a paragraph because I’ve written around the thing I actually think. Sometimes the paragraph is fine and I’m fussing with it because publishing it will make me feel exposed.

The cursor blinks in exactly the same way in both situations. I have to know which one I’m in.

I can be exacting about a sentence and perfectly happy to serve dinner out of the pot. I want the freedom to decide where the extra effort goes. A life in which I apply the same degree of rigor to every email, every meal, and every cupboard would require a woman with an entirely different temperament. I imagine she has matching lids. I wish her well.

Some of my favorite standards are about beauty and have very little to do with what anyone else would notice. I want a lamp close enough to the chair that I can read after dark. I want a drinking glass that feels good in my hand. I want to wear the perfume on an ordinary Wednesday when the only creatures likely to smell it are my dogs. I’ve spent enough of my life keeping beautiful things in reserve and then discovering that the occasion I was saving them for had come and gone.

The lovely thing about deciding how you want to live is that you can start with the place your hand already reaches. The lamp can move tonight. The more expensive work might be admitting that you dread a standing engagement, or telling a person you love that you’re still thinking about the way they spoke to you last Sunday. Some standards take a conversation. Some take money or help. Some take a while to become possible. Knowing what I want gives me a way to recognize the opening when it comes.

And I reserve the right to change my mind after I’ve lived with a choice. I may discover that the pace I was proud to keep leaves me too tired to enjoy the people I kept it for. I may find that the room I arranged so carefully looks beautiful from the doorway and that nobody ever sits in it. I can pull the chair closer to the window. I can move the call. I can let the hem down.

I’m designing for the woman who has to live here. I’d like her to be able to reach for the salt.