Recalculating

Well, here I stand having come through the gifting season. Unlike so many of my friends, I am always delighted with my presents: a pumpkin-colored, ribbed cardigan sweater that—belying all those ordinary words—is so different and so me; a twizzly strand of beads that’s supposed to be a window decoration but I wear as a belt; a rose-scented bar of handmade soap, a new silver bracelet, a Bernard Allison CD.

I am never disappointed, but recently I have been pondering, at this stage of my life climbing up the decade ladder, suggesting to my immediates that they pool their resources, even pool the holidays (birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day), and get me something that I need, something that feels like it will make a big difference in my life, something like a GPS.

Confession for all of you who don’t know me well: I have no sense of direction. Absolutely none. Once I was coming out of a restaurant after a phenomenal dinner with a friend in New York City. We were supposed to be headed back the way we had come, and he says, “Annaliese, I think we’re going the wrong way.” I’m sure it doesn’t sound like much of a faux pas but my friend is blind, and even he got it. Just think what I’m like behind the wheel.

It would never occur to me to go to Seattle, or Washington, D.C., or L.A., any large city I was unfamiliar with, and drive. I could have spent my whole life that way until my friend asked me to drive us from the Philadelphia airport to New Jersey and then to D.C. I glibly said yes, and then ordered maps from Triple A, obsessed about knowing exactly where we were going so I could get a Triptik, plotting every turn, every move, every possibility.
Maps in hand, departure day was approaching, the bags were packed, and I was fretting. And then my friend Joanne says, “Why don’t you rent a GPS with the car?” A GPS? I can rent one? What do they really do?

What do they do? Magic. Absolute magic.

I would go anywhere now, convinced that although the Australian voice I call “honey” may have to tell me a number of times that she is “recalculating” because I have missed the turn or can’t quite figure out the exit off the rotary she calls a roundabout, she will always get me there.

I bet I could own one soon if I just asked for what I wanted, laid it out there clearly.

But then I think about how much I love to be surprised by the random something I might never have seen, never have heard, never have even known about. Like the day, walking down a winter city street, my friend popped into a perfume store and suddenly I had five beautiful bottles of scents I’d never smelled nor heard of—Jean Paul Gaultier, Thallium, Full Metal Jacket Phenomenon—and every time I even look at the bottles on my bureau top I think of my friend, his random generosity, his laughter standing at the counter in front of the ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall display of odd-shaped bottles. I’m not a big perfume person. I probably have perfume for life now. I definitely have something wonderful I never asked for.

Annaliese Jakimides (pronounced Jah-KIH-mih-deez) is an artist and writer who lived on 40 acres on a dirt road in Mt. Chase, population 240, for almost 30 years. She now lives in downtown Bangor, population 32,000.