Of Mice and (Wo)Men

I just finished reading "Loving Frank," the novel about the affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick. Mamah was married to Edwin Cheney when the couple hired architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a new home for them. Like most turn-of-the-century women Mrs. Cheney had abandoned her intellectual pursuits when she married and had children, and when she met Frank, her intellect alit anew with a friend who shared her passion for philosophy, art and literature, and of questioning convention. FLW strove toward "organic" architecture--buildings that would mirror the spirit and the materials of the surrounding land. I've heard this word "organic" a lot in interviews with actors and directors as an analogy to the creative process where parts of a script were made up as they went along rather than sticking to something rigid and preconceived. Imagine living in a home that looks as though it belongs to the land, with native plants surrounding it, letting things grow and blossom at their own pace, in their own time. No more chem-lawn, carefully sculpted flower beds requiring weekly weeding, green lawns with a chem-lawn sign warning people of impending doom if they dare set foot on the treated non-native grass. Imagine letting this same free spirit dominate our personal lives, too.

Last winter we had mice. At first I was in denial. "Maybe it's just one" I told myself. I hear this from a lot of people. "We have a mouse," they say. Having one mouse is kind of like having one cockroach. In my post-college days living in a basement apartment, I would go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and see the cockroach that lived in the bathroom. Just the one. Because that's all that was living there, right? Hmmmm. Well, after I watched various members of the colony of mice living with us skitter on the stove and behind the chairs of dinner guests I got serious about the problem and called the Orkin man. The very next day he strategically placed large quantities of poison around the house in little child-proof containers. I actually am a clean person despite having lived with roaches and mice. Do you want some thumbprint cookies that I made myself? Anyhow, my hairdresser is appalled that I conspired in mammal-murder. She lives very organically and allows the mouse in her house. Because it's just one.

Back to the book...FLW designed the organic, hearth-centered open home for Mamah and Edwin Cheney. And then, in an ironic twist, it was in this family-centered home where Mamah and Frank began the illicit affair. In their ensuing years together, they explored this new organic philosophy of living honestly with themselves out in the world. Having their inner thoughts and feelings and deepest desires of life match what they presented to the world became their new law of order. They lived naturally, honestly. But like the lovely thought that we can live in harmony with nature and allow the one mouse in our house, it's not very practical. One mouse quickly turns into 12, a few weeds in a vegetable patch to the total destruction of the vegetables. Mamah and Frank left their families for two years while they toured Europe, leaving a wife, a husband, and a combined nine children who would forever be scarred with abandonment and rejection while the lovers explored radical new ideas and life with each other. What a terrible price to pay for organic living.