Being in a Stocking Position
Many of us drag some neurotic childhood behavior with us well into adulthood, even when doing so serves no rational purpose. My own standout habit was to spend decades adhering to a practice of using only what I had “on hand” to finish a project, repair an object, or do something that should have been a no-brainer. The problem for me was that “on hand” meant that I rarely had the right tools necessary for completing the task I was going to undertake. Being stocked up on the right equipment and supplies in anticipation of what I might need was simply not how I functioned, despite having had the time, and physical and financial resources, to do so. Until I entered my fifties, I considered this pattern unlikely to change. After all, I’d reasoned, even if I didn’t do things with precision, I was at least a master at getting a chore done.
Over the years, my dear friend, Roxie, and I would laugh ourselves silly about our propensity to perform these sorts of duties haphazardly, reluctantly, or on the cheap. She was the only other person I knew who shared what we called our “bag lady” approach to all missions practical—like using a safety pin on an old bra strap that had stretched out of shape and then wearing it over and over rather than picking up a new one at Macy’s. Or possibly worse, agonizing whether it was okay to reach into the “good” lingerie drawer and break out the Maidenform that had been squirreled away for a year. Duct-taping a curtain rod rather than popping for a replacement bracket fell into the same category. Why would you spend good money on something you don’t need, we’d shriek upon identifying yet another quirk-in-common, mimicking the loud voice that still played in our heads. It was the one that we each remembered as our own mother’s—admonishing us, real time, back when we were just girls.
Some social scientists have characterized this “managing with less” behavior, even when it’s not necessary, as evidence of a “scarcity mentality”—a learned trait that some of us bring forward from early experiences of poverty or other forms of deprivation. As psychologists who’d come from blue-collar backgrounds and had parents who’d been poor when they were children during the Great Depression, both Roxie and I found this supposition to be apt. But, as sisters of the heart, we preferred to refer to this syndrome as “the curse of our mothers.”
While growing up, make do and a lick and a promise were among the clichés that my Mom used routinely: the first when talking with us—her eight children—about how we should handle responsibilities and situations for which we were ill-prepared; the latter when referring to the day-to-day drudgery of housekeeping or any other “woman’s work” that she disliked. At the time, I interpreted her use of these phrases to mean the same thing. As when, after she’d swished the kitchen linoleum with a mop that had only half its strings, she’d hold the handle aloft like a tattered flag and sigh, Oh well, I gave it a lick and a promise. By the long look on her face, I’d thought she meant that she believed she’d done the best she could with the supplies that she had—not that she’d done the job slapdash. Although, as I look back, it seemed she had always raced through those chores. But to be fair, perhaps slapdash and doing her best, given what she had, were equally true.
Mom’s “make do” habits never changed. All the way into old age, until her shaky fingers and poor vision made it impossible for her to thread a needle, my mother relied on using whichever spool of thread wasn’t tangled with the others to replace a fastener or repair a rent seam. Out of an old cookie tin, she’d pull a pair of scissors with dull blades and finish up her labors with a final snip-snip. And so it was not uncommon to see a white shirt button, reattached with its holes crisscrossed in black.
Several days ago, in a phone conversation with my daughter, who was COVID quarantining in her place on the West Coast, I asked her what she recalled from her childhood about how I had “made do.” Prefacing her comments by reminding me that I’d never skimped on anything that involved doing something for her, or anyone else, she rattled off a litany of things that leaped to her mind: Remember how you’d wait until your deodorant stick was down to its last sliver before you’d run to Walgreens for another? She was practically cackling. Or when you refused to take that off-brand lawnmower you’d just bought back to Home Depot—even though the throttle got stuck every single time and the handle was crap? More laughter.
I did remember. Just as I recalled how, during those many years as a divorced parent, I painted each room in our house using a ladder that swayed with every sweep of the roller; or how I used nails to hang photos rather than picture hangers. I let my mind drift to all the winters when I’d have a proper hat, or gloves, or snow boots—but never all three at the same time. With so much evidence, there was no way to deny that all through my child’s formative years, I had relied on items of poor quality or those inadequate for the problem at hand. Isn’t that just crazy? I marveled.
For anyone whose own “scarcity mentality” might still be hampering their decision-making, I’d like to be able to report, if only anecdotally, that good therapy makes it possible to break lifelong deprivation mindsets; I’d like to say that a shift in mental perspective now makes it easy for me to load up at the Ace Hardware or Eddie Bauer’s before something breaks down, or the Chicago winds blow hard. But to suggest that is the truth would be a stretch.
It’s taken my husband, Phil, nearly fifteen years of marriage to influence me to behave differently; he is the person I describe as always “being in a stocking position”—the one who ensures that I will never again use painter’s tape to mail a package. Or a rubber kitchen spatula to scrape ice from the windshield of my twelve-year old SUV. This winter, for the first time ever and thanks to his patient coaching, I have even begun to walk several miles each day, high on the discovery that wearing layers of warm clothing, the right boots, hat, earmuffs and fleece-lined gloves actually does make it possible for a cold-weather hater to tolerate being outdoors. Enjoy it? Well, I’m still working on that.
But to demonstrate to myself that I am not wholly dependent on my partner, and that psychologically, I can create my own “stocking position,” I still giggle with Roxie over our progress to behave differently—regularly setting new “okay to have” goals for ourselves.
So what’s your deadline for ditching those cheap earbuds you told me you’re still wearing—the ones that you keep in place by putting scotch tape over your ears? I asked her the other day. I’m on it! she insisted, the tone in her voice only a bit unconvincing. Really. By the time I celebrate my birthday next week, I’ll have new ones, she assured me. And then, as we always do when one of us is actively practicing letting go of a bag lady behavior, we perform a virtual “pinky swear.”
Don’t tell my mother, Rox whispers. Never, I promise.
Still, we remain a bit nervous. Who knows what our dearly departed mothers can still hear?
Best,
