Book # 12

The Unexpected, Amazing and Elusive Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gillman

Hey! Time for something a little less serious....

When I was a child I could sneak around my whole house, evading the squeaky floor spots, without making a sound. I would slink into the kitchen when my 2 older sisters were doing the dishes and listen to their conversation. One day they caught me listening, and outraged, they asked if I was going to grow up to be a thief. No, not a thief... a spy.

When I was in college, I joined the military. I wanted to specialize in Military Intelligence but there wasn't a MI unit nearby, and so I had to choose between being a cook and a radio operator. Neither one appealed to me and so I picked the one I was most familiar with. I became a cook. I hate cooking!

Also in college I met a guy and became his girlfriend. He was bad for me in so many ways, number one way being that he continued to see and sleep with his old girlfriend and I knew it. He didn't know that I knew it, he thought that he was so sneaky, but I knew everything that he did. Everything. I don't know why I put up with him, call it the stupidity of the young and inexperienced, but I did get a perverse pleasure out of finding out everything about him and him not knowing that I knew.

Now I am in my mid-40's. I am full of "dry rot". I went to a conference a few weekends ago and a woman asked what I did for a living. I told her that I had a window cleaning business, but that I didn't yet know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I told her that I was considering going back to school in the fall, but that I had no clue what to go for. Then the words slid out of my mouth, "I want to be a private investigator." We both laughed. But then I seriously told her about wanting to be a spy when I was a kid and she said, "well maybe you would be good at it then." So it lodged in my brain and when my mom and sisters came for a visit I told them about my funny idea, and during our discussion, it occurred to me that my niche could be investigating for men and women who had met someone (online or otherwise) and wanted to discover any skeletons in their closet before they got involved too deep. I wish I had hired a PI before falling head over heels for my ex. Would have made life a lot less dramatic and painful these last 2 years. Would have saved me a lot of money and heartache. So anyway, during this conversation with my mom and sisters, one sister said that I should read the Mrs. Pollifax series and within a week, I have read 3. The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax and the Elusive Mrs. Pollifax. They are charming---really.

Mrs Pollifax is an elderly lady who has has raised 2 children and lost her husband. She has lived a comfortable life, but now feels like her life is "so unused, so purposeless". She is tempted to take her life, but is interrupted as she is contemplating. Then she reads an article in the newspaper about a woman who, at 63 finds a successful career in the theater. She was performing in a play that had opened to rave reviews in New York. "I owe it to my age" the actress told the interviewer. "The theater world is teeming with bright and talented young things, but there is a dearth of 63 year old character actresses. They needed me--I was unexpected." Mrs. Pollifax wondered if there was an area in which she too might be unexpected? When she was young, she wanted to be a spy and so she decides to volunteer to work for the CIA. Through a funny mistake she is recruited to act as a courier for the CIA and sets off on an adventure to Mexico.

These are my favorite parts---

From the Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax...

He was listening attentively--yes he was a very nice young doctor. "I think you said you do a great deal of volunteer work?" In a precise way she ticked off the list of charities to which she gave her time; it was a long and sensible list. The doctor nodded. "Yes, but do you enjoy volunteer work?" Mrs Pollifax blinked at the unexpectedness of his question. "That's odd," she said, and suddenly smiled at him. "Actually I suppose I loath it." He could not help smiling back at her; there was something contagious about her smile, something conspiratorial and twinkling. "Then perhaps it is time you looked for more congenial outlets," he suggested...."Do you feel you're a particularly creative person?" Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "Goodness, I don't know. I'm just --me." He ignored that, saying very seriously, "It's very important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality."...."Isn't there something you've always longed to do, something you've never had either the time or the freedom for until now?" Mrs. Pollifax looked at him. "When I was growing up--oh for years--I planned to become a spy," she admitted. The doctor threw back his head and laughed, and Mrs, Pollifax wondered why, when she was being her most serious, people found her so amusing....

From The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax...

"As she stood transfixed the last notes of a muezzin's chant reached her ears from below, sounding phantoms in the high clear air, and Mrs. Pollifax thought, I must remember this moment, and then, I shall have to come back and really see this country. Yet she knew if she did come back it would be entirely different. It was the unexpected that brought to these moments this tender unnameable rush of understanding, this joy in being alive. It was the safety following danger, it was the food after hours of hunger, rest following exhaustion, it was the astonishing strangers who had become her friends. It was this and more, until the richness of living caught at her throat, and all the well meant security with which people surrounded themselves was exposed for what it truly was: a wall to keep out life, a conceit, a mad delusion."

From The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax...

"As they taxied down the runway for takeoff she opened a tattered copy of Newsweek. But as the plane lifted, Mrs. Pollifax realized that printed words were lifeless to her at a moment when she was about to begin another courier assignment. She put down the magazine and gazed out of the window, wondering what she would be like when she finished this job because it seemed to her that each one left her changed. Now, once again, she was leaving behind friends, identity, children, possessions--everything secure--for another small adventure. At her age, too. But this was exactly the age, she thought, when life ought to be spent, not hoarded. There had been enough years of comfortable living, and complacency was nothing but delusion. One could not always change the world, she felt, but one could change oneself.

Until next time ;o)