{"id":2371,"date":"2026-08-10T07:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2371"},"modified":"2026-08-14T19:31:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T19:31:43","slug":"ten_spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2371","title":{"rendered":"Ten_Spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I'm in Maine and it's law that I must purchase 
a Boat and Tote canvas satchel on premise 
at the Freeport flagship L.L.Bean store
and then embroider it with a strict ten-character limit personalization.

But brevity is not my strong suit, 
as many a prior boss 
and current partner 
could attest.

So, I spend the best part of an August day
crouched in a gremliness ball, 
elbow crooked over knee, chin on other patella,
plotting and erasing and counting from the rental home's dining table.

I am sounding out potential bag phrases 
typing into Microsoft Word, then highlighting the word 
\u2014 or cluster of words \u2014
to confirm character count.

I imagine myself holding the following bags
which possess the right number of symbols 
as I walk through an urban farmer's market:

\"'A, 2, D' <\/strong>\u2014Buzz\" <\/strong>(Home Alone<\/em> is the best movie. Fight me).
\"2-0-8-5-4!\" <\/strong>(Because we're all Real Housewives of Potomac)<\/em>
\"Shh!Luxury\" <\/strong>(Because 'Quiet Luxury' is longer than 10 characters)
\"Go Bag\" <\/strong>(which I really like, but it's a wee dark, living in the suburbs of a contentious Capitol of the country, and I feel like it's a second custom bag, not the first)

In between, I am trying the same thing 
on my phone Note app, 
because sometimes a small screen 
feels different than a big screen.

Things that definitely don't fit but I write down, anyway:
\"I'm Right on Top of That, Rose!\" <\/strong>(Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead<\/em> is cannon)
\"Co-Detective\" <\/strong>(the smartest thing to come from the stupid movie Holmes and Watson<\/em>)
\"Slightly-Hinged\"<\/strong> (a good summation of my poetry)
\"Skips on Treadmills\"<\/strong> (a grave reminder that Peloton tried to take me out in February 2026)
\"I coupon-clipped your way through law school, so you could make a difference in the world! And now all you can be is 'Neffler the Muffler Man!\"<\/strong> (Shelly Long is a goddess; her character Phyllis Neffler in Troop Beverly Hills<\/em> is unparalleled)


Almost none of my bezeled and brilliant ideas make the cut.
And these iteratives realizations
are followed swiftly with expletives 
(many of them also longer than ten characters).
I keep trying:

\"Sourdough Mom\" <\/strong>(which is probably for the best, because it's a bit basic)
\"Diana (dy-AN-uh)\" <\/strong>(because not all people can pronounce my given name correctly, despite The People's Princess being one of the most popular humans of the twentieth, and twenty-first for that matter, centuries)
Lastly, My First and Surname, together, also misses the count.

And then it comes to me, 
carried down from the sun-drenched Maine heavens 
like blueberry-studded tablets from the Eastern White pine-forested mount: 
\"Semi-Serious\"<\/strong> \u2014 a moniker that fits me to a T.

When I finally find this phrase, it feels like home.
Relief appears, stuffing itself into my crannies 
like towels jammed into a beach bag, and
somehow there's room for just a little more hope, 
another tube of SPF, another to-be-untouched book.

I make my trek to the green-lettered landmark
to select tote size, strap and bottom color, thread hue.
And then I fill in the black outlined boxes, all ten \u2014
but somehow the form is wrong, 
I have two letters to fit in, yet the boxes have run out.
Clearly the form was misprinted, 
I scan the floor to flag down an employee for a correct personalization sheet.
I will this this error on their part.

My current husband peers over my shoulder, 
and unhelpfully, without asking, counts aloud:
\"Di, that's one-two-three-four-five \u2014
\"\u2014 six-seven-eight-nine-ten \u2014 eleven, twelve<\/em>.\"

My phrase is twelve<\/em> characters long.
Impossible.
I am, as I am so often in this life, divergent, 
non-compliant, out of bounds, 
the limit does<\/em> exist, 
so Mean Girls<\/em> Lindsay Lohan you were wrong.

Dread, wet anger seeps into my heart, sweat beads on brow
like a canvas bag left too close to the shoreline at high tide.
My metaphorical sandwiches waterlog with tidal flow, 
my emotional hardcover swells with seaweed-tinged waves.

\"WHAT DO I DO<\/em>?!\" 
I cry out, a little too loud, drawing attention.
Like all cast into the five stages of Sontag's grief, 
I quickly make my way from rage to bargaining.
I can fix this. This is not permanent!

I make my way to the cashier, rehearsing my pitch.
After all, isn't the customer always correct?
What's two characters, among friends?
I approach the next open till, 
lock eyes with the holder of my fate.

\"So I realize you have a limit,\" I begin.
She draws her breath quickly. 
I am not the first to question the fates.
\"Yes, we do,\" she confirms.

\"But I was just thinking, here I am, here you are.
\"We<\/em> can solve this together,\" I say, 
putting on my consultant's solutionist's voice.
Her eyes narrow, her stance stiffens. Not great.

\"Look, I'll sign a waiver, I'll attest I know it's not standard. 
\"I'll get a witness, a notary; this is feasible<\/em>,\" I close.

She stares at me, 
her Maine kindness pared back to brass tacks.
\"Look.\" She starts. 
She leans in, lowers her voice.
\"Here's what I can do. I will write your request in, verbatim<\/em>.
\"I will specify that you acknowledge you are out of standard. 
\"I will have you sign the receipt. 
\"And then<\/em> we let the keepers of the threads decide.\"

I brighten immediately; 
stay of execution! 
I will take an ominous maybe 
over a clear-cut No any day.

She writes my phrase thrice, then states it aloud. 
She prints the receipt.
I review it, re-state it aloud, sign it.
\"Godspeed,\" she says, a curt nod that imbues gravity. 
Like I am pushing off on a whaler for three years 
while my soon-to-be widow wears a path into our floorboards.

And now I wait.





<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTen_Spaces,\u201d a semi-serious evaluation of what to write in ten characters on a Boat and Tote when in Freeport, ME, written Monday, August 10, 2026 poem 222 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Semi-Serious, Fully Maine,”  by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[2184,132,1838,134,2288],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-poems","tag-august","tag-family","tag-high-summer","tag-summer","tag-vacationland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2371"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2406,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371\/revisions\/2406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}