The Marshmallow Paradox

Photo courtesy of Eric Swanson, photographer of amazing ability and two-marshmallowed phenomenon

A Santa Fe photographer knelt against the concrete curb, a long-lensed Nikon pressed against his face. I could see his dirty-blonde eyebrows, a hint of calculated smile. His left cheek radiated concentration, the stark and bitter flavor of work. His assistant lifted a memory-wire rimmed white circle. She let the sun fret behind it, let the flat umbrella cast opaque light on her subject. I stood, my cowboy boots on decorative gravel, an Avon bag in my left hand.

"Hey, what's the strangest person you ever photographed?"

I let my voice rise over the wind. My hair whipped against my back. A gold clip encrusted with fake jewels couldn't hold it, couldn't hold the mountain cascade of harsh air, the tide of time.

Eric didn't answer me the first time I asked. He hemmed and hawed, let his posture push me into the sage, into some kind of green rust-flavored background. He considered my question, answered with a few shorts words about a famous actress and her strange shoot requests. I didn't press. I shifted one leg, then the other. The wind blew my hair over my eyes, into the corners of my mouth. I moved the Avon bag from one hand to another. The photographer snapped one shot, then two. I felt silly, ugly, an Avon poser, a fragment of discarded beauty, a woman who shouldn't sell Avon, who didn't know one damn thing about looking good, who didn't know the least bit about positive thinking. The photographer snapped another photo. He pressed a button.

A slim card slipped out of his assembly. He replaced it for another. He knew the photo shoot had to radiate excitement, carry the viewer from home to some frenetic happy plane of existence. The customer, Positive Thinking Magazine, demanded it, asked for an Avon Lady with energy, with beauty room to spare. I tried to look thrilled, beautifully enigmatic. My nose itched. I rubbed it with an un-manicured finger.

"Hey, Birdie. You ever hear of the marshmallow study?"

The photographer paused as he examined the remaining memory chips. His young assistant brought her right hand to her updo. Her hair curved in the symbol of infinity, in a layered figure eight, held in place with two short wooden pins. I stared at her hair. I stared at her face. I wondered if I were old enough to be her mother. I decided I was.

"No, don't know anything about marshmallows."

He smirked. He held a light meter close to my face. He fiddled with his camera. His fingers looked like thin, mottled sausages, like cylindrical meat left in the sun, as if they were cured with thought nitrates, with some kind of solid emotion. This man's body understood, translated thought into binary message even the new moon could understand. I saw the sun bow behind him, saw the ground move aside as he closed the shutter. He motioned to his assistant to manage the light. He messed with this and that, with yesterday and tomorrow, with me so anti-beauty, so damn anti-Avon that I showed up for the shoot without a trace of makeup. He kept moving equipment, one piece then another, small pieces I didn't recognize.

"Well, a scientist - this was years ago - took a group of elementary kids and gave them each a marshmallow. He told them that they could eat the marshmallow right then and there, enjoy it. Or they could wait, and hold on to their marshmallow. If they kept the candy, they would get another marshmallow when he returned a few hours later. Some of the kids ate their marshmallows right away. Some of them kept them, waited for the prize. Years later, he determined that the kids that waited and got two marshmallows were happiest. They understood what it took to get through life, you know?"

I knew. I knew I was a two marshmallow kid, a wait for the prize kid, a delayed gratification human. I knew in that moment, though my year was frought with peril, with burnt marshmallows, with campfires plumb out of control.

Damn me and my fricken second marshmallow ways, I thought. I am tired of waiting for something to happen.

A week later a friend visited me. His name was John Bell. He came to me from the internet, from the interaction of our pixels, our somehow connected Avon thoughts, advertising thoughts, transparency thoughts. He visited because we built some kind of two-marshallow friendship. He brought his family, his two children the same ages as my two youngest, his companion, his open mind, his love of story and his deep understanding of the concepts that bind human to product, human to human.

John sat in my dining room, my three parrots watching our every move. He breathed the New Mexican air, the space I've experienced while pushing Avon, pushing product against reluctant consumer. He knew what I faced, in that moment he knew, knew the poverty and love I tried to fan across the digital divide. He knew.

His oldest child, his son, disappeared with my son, 11. They moved mirrors against a cool square surface, a game called Deflection. They shared the same space, the same love of science fiction and fantasy, the same shrug of sports, the same outcast fire. I didn't watch them. I sat with John, with his dear companion wife, with his daughter the same age as my youngest, 9, but removed by gender, removed by uncertainty. She watched the parrots, spoke to them the way only children and other birds understand. Her long blonde bob framed a young face round and content, a face decorated with thin-wire glasses, with innate happiness, with a two-marshmallow expectation of the goodness of the whole damn universe, the same two-marshmallow belief John and his entire family shared. We talked about life, about Avon and customers and children and New Mexico, all things delayed, all things that echoed the thoughts of that photographer in the stark Santa Fe sands.

I've surrounded myself with the Two Marshmallowed, I thought. I know them. I know them. We all believe in something greater than us, in the power of truth, the power of time, the power of forgiveness, the same crazy life understanding that my parrots, my dog, my pot-bellied pig understand. Only the happy know what we know.

John left, his family left, the same way Eric the photographer left, in a cloud of tired New Mexican dust.

Carpe mañana, I thought. Seize tomorrow, seize the potential we all have, the life we all hold underneath the surface.

As John and his beautiful family headed toward Taos I remembered my friend Carroll, the first real friend I met on the internet, the friend who taught me that sharing emotion was the only real thing I could ever, ever do.

"I'm so glad you're a pathological optimist," she said. She wrote it in email, but I could hear her clear California voice across the digital divide. "Because what else is there?"

Carroll doesn't know I printed out that email, taped it to my wall the fifth week I ever put my mind to words, my thoughts to blog. She doesn't know I carefully pulled the paper off the wall when I moved from ocean to mountain, when I stuffed my two Avon years in my pocket and made a new place home. I taped her words to the wall behind this damn computer, behind my sorry tiredness, my sickness with Avon, with being a single mom, with loneliness and fatigue. I taped it to my cracked stucco wall.

Here I sit, a few weeks after John, a month after Eric, almost three years after meeting Carroll. Though the year sets in darkness like the new moon, though I sit here in the same poverty, the same aloneness I suffered over three years, I feel the current of those two damn marshmallows, the current Eric lets unleashed through his photography, that John lets melt through his advertising genius, that Carroll seeps through her pathologically optimistic life.

Yeah, I'm lost, I'm two months from the death of both parents, I'm broke, I'm single, I'm alone, I'm afraid. But damn it, damn it. I would still wait for that second marshmallow. You know I would. Not just me, but Eric, John, Carroll, all the people they hold dear. We carry those second marshmallows like a holy sacrament. You know it.

Somehow, in our solitude, in our art, in our interaction with others. We are the happy.

Comments

[Rick]

Two very beautiful portraits, Birdie.

[Mike]

Good Morning!

Yet another excellant piece of work, Bird Woman!

You should write for a living!

[Shrexy]

as that eternal two marshmallow optimist you of course know about the big mug of hot chocolate that goes with them!! I know you knew...but the others may not have !! :-))

[Carroll]

Birdie, this is a very moving reflection on how you live your hard-scrabble Avon-shackled optimistic life, my friend. May you soon be showered with a veritable multitude of marshmallows!

And Shrexy, you gave me an interesting perspective on this whole theory. At first I thought "Birdie's wrong -- I'd have eaten that marshmallow in a fit of childish gluttony, oh yes I would." But, y'know? If a mug of hot chocolate had been sitting right there just waiting to be topped? I'd have waited. For sure I would have. Because it's just *so* much better with two!

[Carroll]

Oh, and that photo! What a riot!! It reminded me that you once said you sometimes put googly eyes on the Avon brochures, but then I thought maybe you're actually using it as a barf bag! But also, you have a very "Who, me?!" look.

Captions, anyone?

[Shrexy]

I knew you would have understood Carroll :-))

[Karen M]

[sigh] I don't think I've ever really been a two-marshmallow person... and maybe that explains a lot. I might be becoming one, though, after events of the past year or two. We'll just have to wait and see.

A lovely piece of writing, Birdie!

[Jedd]

Hmmmm. Marshmallows. I think that there are some out here who, when given that single marshmallow, don't really believe it when the fellow says that "if they wait to eat it they will get another". But they hold onto it anyway, wondering (hoping?) that instead they will get some jello for a lovely salad.

[Shelby]

There are some of us that wait for our marshmallows to get stale, because then they're more fun to melt into our hot chocolate.

Especially if they're Marshmallow Peeps.

[Meg]

I am a two-marshmallow girl, but I hold my marshmallow tight, to avoid being a no-marshmallow girl.

[Wandering Willow]

Birdie, I hope you view me as one more marshmallow to sweeten your life! We are all marshmallows in your cup of hot cocoa.

[moi]

ha. i'm definitaly a 2 marshmallow kid too. but i feel like other kids either steal my marshmallows, or i feel sorry for them and i give my marshmallows away. so in the end, i'm just a no marshmallows gal :)

[E]

Nitrate filled sausage fingers? That might explain a few things. Hey it's a Canon and yes photographers are picky about such things. Here is a link to the marshmellow story lest I be rightly accused of spreading misinformation - http://www.sybervision.com/Discipline/marshmallow.htm
Birdie it was nice to spend some time with ya. Happy New Year!
E

[Jenna (photo assistant)]

Never fear Birdie I am 34 and I really doubt you would be old enough to be my mother. Sometimes the looking young thing can be a curse. My hubby and I sometimes get carded for movies. hehe

Such a beautifully written story. You are so talented with your words. Writing, no problem! You have good things coming your way.

Pleasure to have worked with you. Best wishes to you and yours this coming year!

Jenna :)

[Birdie]

E, thank you for visiting!!! I had SO MUCH FUN with you and J! I will fix the story to reflect your prized possession, mea culpa!!!

Jenna, you have the wind of youth at your back, you will always be younger than your years and wise enough to know. : ) thanks for reading my crazy account of our time together. I loved working with the both of you and know that PM mag will be thrilled.

xo to all!!!

[Lloyd]

well darling lady.. I was the kid who organized the rest to distract the scientist and fill the bag with cotton puffs...

but you are the optimist...
thank coincidence!

hang in there if I found somebody online you surely can.. you are WAYYYY sexier than I am!

;)

L.