One thing we all definitely agreed on was that we were going to write a book about writing this book. It took two years to compile, compose, and configure. The arguments, talks, and loud discussions wore us to a frazzle and had several contemplating a visit to Dr. Kavorkian. We cried, laughed, sang, hugged, hated, loved, spit, and cursed. We all decided we would never do this again, even though we had already agreed we would. Collectively agreeing to take two completely opposite actions was de rigueur for this little group. Yet, unbelievably, we got the book written!
We all concurred—it is a most wonderful book.
Even though we wrote this introduction after the book was written, we still can't agree on how the format came to be. One might think we should know how it came to be, since it already exists. There you have it: another example of how organized and efficient this little group is.
All of us do acknowledge the very first time the book concept was initiated. It was when our scribe came to the meeting full of breathless tales about a show she had watched. She said it was the Sally Jessie O'Donnell show, but we knew she was confused. She was not confused, however, about the talk show guest who had so offended and amused her.
We patiently waited while Cindy set the scene, background, and characters. Her marvelous ability to do this was why we made her the group scribe, but what might be fun to read, can be a bit of a pain to hear.
"There was Sally O'Donnell with those red glasses and looking sooooo solemn," Cindy described. "Her 'regular-people' guests were three women who were looking to put some oomph into their love lives."
As Cindy expounded on the story, she waved her arms around to represent the exclamation points and semi-colons she could not relate in the verbiage of her spoken tale.
"Her 'star-type' guest was Ruth Wizenheimer. You know her...old lady...supposed to be an expert on sex?" Cindy stopped so we could nod our heads. We knew better than to try to actually say something.
"Well, listen to this load of crap: the nutty old lady was describing fun sex play involving throwing onion rings at your partner's private part!"
Cindy paused for appropriate dramatic emphasis, as we absorbed the concept of greasy onion rings tossed as horseshoes around the peg-landing on what we assumed was a perpendicular male member.
Charlotte blurted, "Henry and I did that just last week!"
This unexpected admission, of course, took the wind out of the Cindy-and-the-onion-ring story, as Cindy was about to launch into her impromptu stand-up routine regarding fried vegetables and public hairs. No doubt, she planned to lambaste anyone who would engage in such bizarre behavior. She was stunned to muteness at Charlotte's confession.
"I'm only kidding," Charlotte retracted. "I saw that show, Cindy, and thought the same as you. Onion rings in the bedroom, can you imagine?"
Only momentarily nonplussed and granted the reprieve by Charlotte, Cindy launched into her routine.
"Now, here are three women guests on this Sally O'Donnell show...just average type women, like all of us," Cindy stated, as she nodded to our group, as if any of us, in the daily course of our human lives, would be a guest on the Rosie Winfrey show to seek additional information on our sex lives and tossed vegetables.
"What really pisses* me off, this Dr. Ruth Wizenheimer is telling these women this kind of crap. These women think this dried up old prune is an 'expert' and what has she done here?"
*One of our members, who feels very strongly about cursing, would like to have it publicly inserted that she disapproves of such language. Since she says not to reveal her identity, all we can say is she is a member of the Garden Club and does not like the curse words.
Cindy started winding up her arms and we knew she was about to come to the "moral" of her story.
"First, the old biddy has the women feeling really inferior now. Surely any modern and happening kind of women is imaginative enough to play ring-around-the-penis with onion rings. Second, these women are going to go home, fire up the deep fryers, and wait for their husbands to come in from the day's labors. Now, imagine if you are one of these husbands."
Obediently, we imagined our husbands coming home to the smell of frying onions and to wives dressed in split-crotched panties. We could see where Cindy was going here.
"The dingbat woman, on the advice of Wizenheimer, whispers sweet nothings into hubby's ear. He, we assume here, agrees to a bedroom interlude, no doubt somewhat concerned that his wife plans to concurrently cook dinner and make love."
Cindy again inserted a well-positioned pause as we again pondered the unsuspecting husband and calculating wife.
"The guy is down to his birthday suit, and in comes his wife with a bowl of onion rings. I'm not even sure if this Wizenheimer broad instructed them to allow the rings to cool," Cindy continued, on a roll now.
"The wife picks up one of the onion rings and playfully tosses it in the direction of her husband's most private part which has never known the feel of a greasy, hot, and well-breaded onion ring upon it. What do you think this guy is going to do?"
Cindy stopped as we followed instructions and pondered what the guy was going to do.
As if permission was granted to speak, we all animatedly offered our opinion on what the guy would do.
Jean laughed, "My husband would probably just take away the bowl of onion rings and tactfully suggest that we use whipped cream instead."
Melanie shook that long, beautiful hair of hers and offered, "I think James would probably ask that I wait for them to cool. But yes, James would probably go along with the game."
Trudy, who is 53 and the oldest core member of our group, gave a hoot. "I can tell you if I ever tried anything like that with Ray, he would love it! First you would have to get him off the floor where he would no doubt be from a drop-dead faint."
The rest of the attendees that night continued to throw in their conclusions as to what the guy would do. The general consensus was that the guy would most likely oblige in some sort of fashion. Cindy, at this point, was beside herself, because this was not the ending to the story she had envisioned.
"You all are just saying that," Cindy said to resume control of the narration. "You know darn well your husbands would think you all were nuts. The most that would probably happen is like Jean said...he might request a substitute of whipped cream for onion rings."
Cindy leaned her upper torso into the group and started pounding the table to bring home the belabored and brilliant point she would make, were it not for the likes of us and our perverted mates.
"This gets on my nerves. These people get on the tube and tell all the women of America how to live, what to like, when to leave, who to love, where to learn, and why we lust. That Dr. Joyce Sisters person was on another talk show...the late night guy—Jay O'Brien? This broad is telling us to emulate Princess Diana!"
Cindy stopped for another pregnant pause as we pondered emulating Princess Diana. No one spoke at this point because we rather thought the princess dressed quite well and wouldn't find such emulation likely to make us lesser persons. Somehow we knew that this was most definitely not the point Cindy was making, since her tone dripped derision to those of us who would emulate Diana.
"Princess Di is a nut case who calls married men five thousand times through the night, married a jug-eared prince, and is the mother of kings!"
Cindy pointedly stopped here. We knew her climax was reached and we were collectively expected to understand the point.
None of us did.
"How are these people role models?" Cindy continued fluidly, as she knew that our group dotage required that she finish the moral.
"Princess Di? Can women relate to that? Onion rings on a private part? Ninety-five year old women who profess to be the whimsical love gurus that would bring you permanent bedtime happiness? Some sibling doctor type that offers Princess Di as heroine to the women of America?"
While we did not actually see the question marks in Cindy's narrative, we knew they were there. Such oral questions marks were usually followed by the culmination of the current observation coupled with the proposed solution.
"Don't you see?" Cindy continued with yet another question mark. "We are going to have to write the book!"
When she ends with an exclamation point like that, we start to get concerned. The last time she did that, we ended up "owning" some remote and rural strip of road. Such quasi-ownership required that we spend three hours every other week cleaning up litter.
"Here we are," Cindy started in earnest, "a group of solid middle-aged women. We have been through puberty and we have been through menopause. We've been single, divorced, widowed, and married. Some of us have had abortions. Most of us have children. We've been daughters, sisters, employees, supervisors, and mistresses. Between us, we know it all! It is up to us to provide the young women coming up, some documentation of our experiences. We can't just turn away and leave them to follow the directions of the advice gurus. Heck, we are going to have a whole generation of women believing that marrying princes and tossing food in the boudoir is the key to happiness. It is us who can tell them the truth."
Cindy ended to leave us bewildered as to exactly who in this group had had an abortion and to really go nuts trying to figure out who was a mistress.
Thus began the composition of a "self-help" book that would be written by a group of middle-aged women who, until this book, had only membership in a garden club as the commonality.
Then began the arguments as to exactly what sort of advice we would jointly proffer and in what manner.
It was a general consensus that we would relate our garden experiences, since we were a garden club. Somehow, we jointly decided, we would have to parallel the garden tales with the journey to becoming a mature woman.
Then our quiet member, Sarah, said that she really thought we needed to have some domestic advice in the book. We looked at her, quite shocked.
"Look, you say you want to compose a down-to-earth book here. One every woman—young, old, middle-aged—can relate to, right?"
We nodded our collective heads. Indeed, that was our plan.
"Well, let's face it, most woman are going to bear the burden of running the domicile. That has not really changed in our lifetime."
To please Sarah, we would include hints on how to make meatballs that do not turn into a frying pan full of unstructured ground beef.
Finally agreeing to focus on the varying roles in a woman's life, as well as the diverse growth stages, we then had to ascertain by what vehicle we were going to do the deed.
Cindy, our elected scribe, wanted the book to be in the first-person voice. We would zero in on a topic, outlined Cindy, and each member would relate an experience or story on said topic. Cindy would then recount the story, experience, or tale in first-person narrative.
We had a real problem with that, as Cindy could not be reliably counted on to tell the story with the same beginning, middle, ending, and moral, as the originator of the wisdom would expect.
After two months of wrangling, and with Cindy constantly threatening to quit, we agreed to write the story in the first-person plural. We wanted the story to come from our most-wise group as a collective and unified voice.
This meant, of course, that we all had to agree on the choice of the various stories, method of narration, and moral to be imparted. This particular process took another eighteen months.
Finally, and after three months of heated negotiations, we came up with a definition of "garden." We defined a garden as any ecosystem with human occupants. All plants and animals within the ecosystem were counted as being part of the garden. The garden would now include, in addition to the humans, all animals, bugs, birds, and household pets within the ecosystem.
Cindy threw up those arms in disgust and asked why we didn't call the book Everything You Need to Know About Being a Woman Can Be Learned in Your Own Ecosystem.
Actually, we all agreed with Cindy and said to go ahead and change the name. Cindy demurred. She thought "garden" a better word in terms of public recognition.
Read on, women of America. Within these pages you will discover the secrets of everything—from how to live with pimples, to dealing with middle-age bladder leak. You will be privy to the love secrets of those far more experienced than Dr. Sisters. You will even, dear reader, be given excellent tips on how to dress for work and for a date.
We know you will especially like the chapter entitled Men are Blue Jays; Woman Are Cardinals.
Our treasurer, winsome Melanie, has computed the sum total of our female experience. While some would not reveal their age, with shrewd estimation we can safely state that this book contains the combined wisdom of 1,070 years of being female! Almost as much the esteemed Dr. Wizenheimer!