As a child of the 80s… well, 70’s… the high 60’s, my concept of luxury should have been heavily influenced by television shows, particularly one entitled Dynasty. I’m sorry, the title of the show was “Dynasty”; the people on the show were entitled (misspoke there). It was a television program about rich people and their problems. These people lived in a world filled with luxury.
They changed clothes more than once a day. They all had swimming pools and large brimmed hats to wear as they sat next to them. They never did laundry, or dishes, or vacuumed. They had incredibly sumptuous tables of food in vast dining rooms, but rarely ever ate anything, and if they had pets, they were incredibly small white dogs which never pooped.
And they were all quite stunning, if a bit culturally monochromatic, except for Diahann Carroll in the show’s 4th season who played Dominique Deveraux (an iconic role that I hold directly responsible for my mother’s experiments with shoulder pads in her dresses for a very very very short while.).
There were multiple people to drive you places. An endless supply of clean towels. Closets with lights in them. Their velvet was our velveteen, their cloth napkins our paper towels, their stemware our tumblers that the gas station gave us with a fill-up.
I grew up in one of those small neighborhoods that had been abandoned by whites 30 years before, enjoyed a working class African-American renaissance then sharply declined socioeconomically in the 1960’s with, I suppose, nearly everything else. Our sidewalks cracked, the trees which had once lined the street were lost to blight, and windows were barred with decorative wrought iron. But we never felt as if we lacked anything, to have was to have enough, to have more was… ridiculous, there was no use for more. My mother worked miracles and extra jobs to feed us and sent me to an amazing grade school, which was private, and absolutely a luxury, and taught me at home on top of my regular lessons, because love and learning were the only two things there could never be enough of.
In our house, those plastic filling station tumblers did represent luxury; made from the highest quality plastics with a chandelier cut vertical pattern resembling crystal, they caused light to play ever so jauntily through your fruit juice in the morning. They weren’t expensive, but they weren’t necessary, and so the unnecessary, not the extravagant, is still my personal concept of “luxury”.
But top of the list of unnecessary things we might someday be able to attain was the humble and super expensive (I was told) Dixie cup. Oh, how I longed for the plastic dispenser with the thick foam sticker that we could put in the bathroom so that we could brush our teeth and then get just the right amount of water to spit with. That’s the only thing I think they were good for, unless you were one of the Borrowers, which, I don’t think still works out scale-wise.
My grade school, a Catholic private school that decided to admit not only boys but a large number of minority and lower income students on scholarship basis, allowed me to mingle with kids from all over the city, including the very wealthy enclaves so foreign that we’d never even driven past them. They had Dixie cup dispensers in every bathroom, just like on tv, even the ones with the jokes on them.
One of my classmate’s parents used to have a “cookie party” every year. My mother had no idea what this was - she couldn’t figure out the event that was being celebrated. Was the cookie invented on this day or did they have some new breakthrough in baking that needed annual marking? We showed up with 24 Toll House cookies presented on one of the plates we only used on holidays. The family was kind and open and more than a little curious about us, in a good way. My mother was whisked away to drink tea without a bag in a cup smaller than she thought in any way practical, and I went upstairs to play with my junior host and other friends from school.
His bedroom was the one from Escape to Witch Mountain, with enough room to hold a train set that was fully assembled as well as a desk and a bed and a GI Joe fort with the zipline feature and enough room so Joe could actually travel a significant distance. Our host was generous and kind and we all had an amazing time. Cookies were set up for us downstairs, but he wanted us to have something special, so we all followed him into the kitchen. An older man was standing there in a black suit. Our host excitedly asked “Where are the cherries?” and the man turned to the cabinets behind him and retrieved a new jar of maraschino cherries, another item deemed absolutely unnecessary in our house. The butler opened the jar and held it out to our host, who took several. The rest of us kind of hesitated, but the man saw our apprehension and gently nodded, and everyone took one. I was the last in line - I vividly remember looking up at this older black gentleman, the age of my grandfather, holding a now nearly empty jar of something I thought unattainable. I took one, shook it gently to get all the syrup off so it wouldn’t drip on the floor, and told him “thank you”.
I kept the stem of that cherry.
In the car on the way home I told my Mom this story of course, and she had stories of her own, all these women taking four of five bites of cookies she thought were already bite-size, talking about all the things that they did everyday which had sounded impossible for a moment until she realized that homemaking was their profession. “That was fascinating” my mother said. “Well, I guess that’s the way some people live. It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Not a comparison or a value judgement, just observing ethnographically. We were travelers, explorers, eager to learn about other places but never assuming any lack in our own home. But we never got Dixie cups. Maybe once, when they were on sale at a TG&Y that was closing, but without the dispenser.
The other thing was Handi-wipes™. My grandmother had some and used them in the kitchen because to her the idea of paper towels was extravagant, but a paper towel you could use over and over was a rag fit for royalty. My mother was unconvinced, even though they cost less than paper towels you couldn’t scrub with them and they only really rinsed out successfully maybe five times or so before dissolving. We’re sponge people, durability, versatility, a scrub side, an absorbent side. And though still aesthetically I’m drawn to those blue and white stripes, Handi-wipes™ are a premium household item that even after 45 years I cannot bring myself to actually buy.
Handi-wipes™ are the sort of thing that come in different colors so they can match your kitchen… so that your sink area isn’t too jarring for visitors scanning the room. It reflects a standard of living that in my imagination would probably not include wiping anything at all…so. Rags for show? A sponge is fine, does the job.
My idea of luxury is tightly bound to my commitment to the concept of enough rather than more. This is easier to visualize when time is added to the equation. More wine, eventually, becomes enough wine. More potatoes? Enough potatoes.
Is contentment that closely associated with attainment? Does happiness always have to be “pursued”. That makes it seem like joy is a little bunny darting away through the woods. Oh, ok, well, that does sound darling, maybe happiness is a little bunny darting through the woods, prancing here and there ok bit off course here.
The idea of luxury, kind of like capitalism, depends on our dissatisfaction with the quality or quantity of whatever we currently have, and frowns most heavily on such random frolicking. But for some of us, “more” and “all” weren’t concepts that were ever on the table, we just wanted “enough” of whatever. Thus I am a grateful bunny. With a sponge.
Maybe Christmastimes or a birthdays bring the occasional “extra”, but nowadays I’m just looking for an extra hour’s sleep. Take heed, mighty Carrington family; the riches of your dynasty cannot compare to the afternoon nap, where no one calls and there’s a little breeze and the sheets are cool, and there’s plenty of time before dinner. That is luxurious.
Flossy. Flossy.