People are always clamoring for pictures of JoBiv. Why, clamorers? Why?
Well, the day has finally come. I chose an oldie but a goodie, and I hope you like it. There I am in the middle, with Cripps on the left (funny, he's left-handed) and Smacks on the right. This telling photo comes from what was likely to be someone's birthday, because we didn't have cake often in our house. Can you imagine, three boys and a little girl in one house. Would you give us sugar? And you shoulda seen Smacks on sugar. Alarming, I believe, is the most accurate term.
Anywaysss, my evil mother always kept the camera on hand just in case we broke down in tears, or this is what I've come to believe after sifting through our albums. Many a life-affirming moment has been caught on Kodachrome - Smacks' head stuck in the next-door neighbor's deck rungs, Smacks post blue chalk-eating experiment, JoBiv giving herself a bath in the bathroom sink and getting stuck there... etc. Okay, Cripps and Tom didn't cry as much. Cripps wasn't on Earth with us, and Tom was high. Or somewhere else.
In this case it's impossible to know the true prompt for this bout of tears, but my brothers sure do look guilty. Happily guilty. I mean, could I really be that miserable when I was given a piece of cake and free reign - sans utensil or parental help - to shove it into my mouth? And my ear canal and nostrils, apparently. Perhaps I was protesting the busy wallpaper, or the hand-me-down pants, or maybe I was simply being a two-year-old pain in the ass. If it weren't for those smiles and the strategically hidden hands, I could believe it was just a moment of artistically inspired tempestuous moodiness on my part.
Or perhaps this is early proof of my disdain for posing for cameras.
Showing posts with label weejo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weejo. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
Oh, manboys.
The manboy I'm trying not to love was sleeping with everyone. EVERYONE. I have been trying to salvage whatever was salvageable, discussing misunderstandings (apparently I wasn't clear about expecting him to reserve his body for me), attempting to spend time together, and it seemed to be going well. I tried to reach him yesterday, suggested hanging out, and lo, he was unavailable for hours. He tells me today, "Sorry about that. I was with someone."
"I'm thinking of giving up on you," I say.
"Honestly," he says, "I think you should. The more chances you give me, the shittier I feel about the whole thing."
The shittier HE feels. Hmm.
But, the timing... I had finally trusted him enough to talk about some Big Scary Things (psych history). I trusted him enough to talk about my family a bit (forced to, due to an impromptu trip to Rottenchester to see my brother who had drunkenly fallen into a fire pit and required surgery). I let him keep a toothbrush here. I let him keep deodorant here. I introduced him to friends and invited him to parties! Me! I did!
So, what now? Oh, right, obviously, stop talking to him forever.
But, what if the rest of your life is pukey (totally a word) and your friends are all distant and you have no steady income and your Dad is harassing you about abandoning the medical supports you have? What if you haven't left your apartment in three days and your symptoms are worsening and you're avoiding your roommates so you don't have to speak to other humans? What if you're getting a subcutaneous port surgically placed into your chest this week and already feel like you don't have much support, even a ride home from the hospital? What if you just need someone to hold, just for a minute... Just for a second...
Doesn't matter. Stop talking to him. Forever.
Or at least until he grows up. (Which could be Forever.)
"I'm thinking of giving up on you," I say.
"Honestly," he says, "I think you should. The more chances you give me, the shittier I feel about the whole thing."
The shittier HE feels. Hmm.
But, the timing... I had finally trusted him enough to talk about some Big Scary Things (psych history). I trusted him enough to talk about my family a bit (forced to, due to an impromptu trip to Rottenchester to see my brother who had drunkenly fallen into a fire pit and required surgery). I let him keep a toothbrush here. I let him keep deodorant here. I introduced him to friends and invited him to parties! Me! I did!
So, what now? Oh, right, obviously, stop talking to him forever.
But, what if the rest of your life is pukey (totally a word) and your friends are all distant and you have no steady income and your Dad is harassing you about abandoning the medical supports you have? What if you haven't left your apartment in three days and your symptoms are worsening and you're avoiding your roommates so you don't have to speak to other humans? What if you're getting a subcutaneous port surgically placed into your chest this week and already feel like you don't have much support, even a ride home from the hospital? What if you just need someone to hold, just for a minute... Just for a second...
Doesn't matter. Stop talking to him. Forever.
Or at least until he grows up. (Which could be Forever.)
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Home is where the ______ is
If I tell you about my annual journey home for the holidays, I will:
1. Cry
2. Hate myself for crying
3. Feel terribly guilty for any written attacks (direct or subconscious) that would inform you on the difficulty of being around my family
Instead I will tell you things (hopefully benign) that I remembered while I was home.
1. We used to have nougat at Christmas. Apparently this is an Italian thing, according to shops around Boston. My parents don't remember.
2. My mother developed a brilliant system for socks and hand-me-downs that she should have patented. It's not too late, actually.
3. Sunday mass, and waking, dressing, and getting there on time, was a predictably epic battle of Kids vs. Dad. Dad always won but he fought dirty. (So did we.)
4. Our phone would ring off the hook on holidays. Relatives and friends would call and whoever had the phone would call the next person into the kitchen to take a turn talking. It was torture, but it was explicitly forbidden to dodge the two-second conversation. Reluctance was tolerated. Hiding was not.
5. After we were already off to school, Mom would make herself a mug of tea with milk and a little sugar. Presumably she would carry it around the house while she put away laundry or cleaned, because we would find it on a closet shelf or a windowsill, half-full and cold. I use to love sipping it before I brought it downstairs to the kitchen.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
The crux
My grandmother passed away, finally*, at age 94 back in October. She died in her sleep. More importantly, she died dreaming of my grandfather (or rather in a haze of dementia) and repeatedly mentioned that he had asked her to marry him.
"What should I say?" she asked my father.
"For godssake, say yes, otherwise I won't exist," said my father. She laughed as though she got the joke, and she may have, because she was a sharp lady.
I love to think of her suspended in that giddy moment of young love, the moment just before her life settled into its track and took off barreling toward pregnancies and houses and addictions and celebrations. I see it as a conductor raising her arm for the downbeat, the gesture before the music, the instruction to draw bows and breath.
Yet, when my grandmother died, I had a sudden and explosive thought; I had been waiting for her to die before allowing myself to consider suicide. It was a simple rule, and it worked for years. While she was alive I could spare her needless pain and confusion. How would this woman, who only knew the kindest, most patient side of me, ever reconcile that image with the desperation of my truer self? Why force sobs from her? I assumed, too, that my father would very likely lie to her, and how could I make him do that. How cruel would I have to be to force him to make that decision?
And so she fell asleep, and so she never woke, and when that word popped into my head I had nothing handy to bat it away.
Suicide.
At first, the thought itself was so upsetting that the anxiety swept me into fits. Every moment of solitude or quiet brought on hyperventilation and tears.
Then I started really thinking about it; how I had drawn away from friends and I could recede even more, how I could sell my things, throw away papers. We already had a temp at work, which just proved (in my mind) that everyone is replaceable. I had already stopped enjoying the usual pastimes; reading, writing, singing, hanging out with friends, even eating. The world had become two dimensional, blank cardboard cut-outs of the actions of living. And so it was time.
Of course, I'm an asshole, and this is why.
My father hinted to it on the phone but I didn't believe him at the time. He was drunk. But then again, he had just lost his mother. I cut him a little slack, at least. He mumbled something about Grandma's will, and I decided to dismiss it. Then my mother mentioned something and credibility came into the picture. And then I went home to see my aching family and touch them to make sure they were solid and okay.
Mom and Dad were puttering downstairs, clearly waiting for me to get ready. I came downstairs to the two of them on either side of the kitchen counter, suddenly hushing themselves. My father had something in his hand, barely hidden.
"Johanna Mary... your grandmother loved you very much." He then went on to describe the many ways I was good to her; sending cards and letters, insisting on seeing her on my trips home, making sure my brothers remembered her at Christmas time and her birthday. And then he talked about his mother meeting his father, how dear they were to each other.
And then he showed me the ring, and told me Grandma wanted me to have it. She only mentioned four people in her will, and I was the only grandchild. She left her wedding band to Aunt Depresso, her pearls to Aunt Klondike (I think), and her engagement ring, a cushion-cut diamond flanked by the tiniest chips of diamond in an art deco setting, to me.
I cried. A lot. My parents hugged me. They couldn't know that every part of me wanted to reject the gift. If I had really been a good granddaughter, I felt, I would have called. I would have sent the card I bought for her last week and she would have loved it. I would have gotten my license and seen her on my own, and often. But then again, here was proof that she knew I loved her.
Four months later, my brother said the thing I needed to hear, and maybe couldn't absorb until this moment.
"Grandma didn't want you to be buried with that ring."
He also soliloquized about how special I am and how important I am and blah blah blah - nothing I could believe besides that one thing. I was given a ring in hope that I would have a piece of her, know she loved me, maybe someday find my own love. She could never have thought that I would kill myself mere months afterward and scramble to think of someone more worthy of the ring. She was clear in her gesture: I am worthy. Whether or not I believe it, I am worthy of her love and love from any direction.
I still don't believe it, but I do accept that she believed it. In her honor, I live.
*"Finally" sounds harsh, however, Grandma was fed up with birthdays and suffering daily shame from merely existing in a facility where she did not leave her room or cultivate friendships. Some of that is her own fault. I also find myself saying "finally" to continue convincing myself that death is quite final. It's a one-way street. Unless you're Wesley from The Princess Bride and you wind up "mostly dead," but I digress.
"What should I say?" she asked my father.
"For godssake, say yes, otherwise I won't exist," said my father. She laughed as though she got the joke, and she may have, because she was a sharp lady.
I love to think of her suspended in that giddy moment of young love, the moment just before her life settled into its track and took off barreling toward pregnancies and houses and addictions and celebrations. I see it as a conductor raising her arm for the downbeat, the gesture before the music, the instruction to draw bows and breath.
Yet, when my grandmother died, I had a sudden and explosive thought; I had been waiting for her to die before allowing myself to consider suicide. It was a simple rule, and it worked for years. While she was alive I could spare her needless pain and confusion. How would this woman, who only knew the kindest, most patient side of me, ever reconcile that image with the desperation of my truer self? Why force sobs from her? I assumed, too, that my father would very likely lie to her, and how could I make him do that. How cruel would I have to be to force him to make that decision?
And so she fell asleep, and so she never woke, and when that word popped into my head I had nothing handy to bat it away.
Suicide.
At first, the thought itself was so upsetting that the anxiety swept me into fits. Every moment of solitude or quiet brought on hyperventilation and tears.
Then I started really thinking about it; how I had drawn away from friends and I could recede even more, how I could sell my things, throw away papers. We already had a temp at work, which just proved (in my mind) that everyone is replaceable. I had already stopped enjoying the usual pastimes; reading, writing, singing, hanging out with friends, even eating. The world had become two dimensional, blank cardboard cut-outs of the actions of living. And so it was time.
Of course, I'm an asshole, and this is why.
My father hinted to it on the phone but I didn't believe him at the time. He was drunk. But then again, he had just lost his mother. I cut him a little slack, at least. He mumbled something about Grandma's will, and I decided to dismiss it. Then my mother mentioned something and credibility came into the picture. And then I went home to see my aching family and touch them to make sure they were solid and okay.
Mom and Dad were puttering downstairs, clearly waiting for me to get ready. I came downstairs to the two of them on either side of the kitchen counter, suddenly hushing themselves. My father had something in his hand, barely hidden.
"Johanna Mary... your grandmother loved you very much." He then went on to describe the many ways I was good to her; sending cards and letters, insisting on seeing her on my trips home, making sure my brothers remembered her at Christmas time and her birthday. And then he talked about his mother meeting his father, how dear they were to each other.
And then he showed me the ring, and told me Grandma wanted me to have it. She only mentioned four people in her will, and I was the only grandchild. She left her wedding band to Aunt Depresso, her pearls to Aunt Klondike (I think), and her engagement ring, a cushion-cut diamond flanked by the tiniest chips of diamond in an art deco setting, to me.
I cried. A lot. My parents hugged me. They couldn't know that every part of me wanted to reject the gift. If I had really been a good granddaughter, I felt, I would have called. I would have sent the card I bought for her last week and she would have loved it. I would have gotten my license and seen her on my own, and often. But then again, here was proof that she knew I loved her.
Four months later, my brother said the thing I needed to hear, and maybe couldn't absorb until this moment.
"Grandma didn't want you to be buried with that ring."
He also soliloquized about how special I am and how important I am and blah blah blah - nothing I could believe besides that one thing. I was given a ring in hope that I would have a piece of her, know she loved me, maybe someday find my own love. She could never have thought that I would kill myself mere months afterward and scramble to think of someone more worthy of the ring. She was clear in her gesture: I am worthy. Whether or not I believe it, I am worthy of her love and love from any direction.
I still don't believe it, but I do accept that she believed it. In her honor, I live.
*"Finally" sounds harsh, however, Grandma was fed up with birthdays and suffering daily shame from merely existing in a facility where she did not leave her room or cultivate friendships. Some of that is her own fault. I also find myself saying "finally" to continue convincing myself that death is quite final. It's a one-way street. Unless you're Wesley from The Princess Bride and you wind up "mostly dead," but I digress.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
What do you do with a broken JoBiv, what do you do with a broken JoBiv
What do you do with a broken JoBiv ear-lye in the mornin'...
To be honest, I don't care to hear your answers. I don't want to think or grow or challenge anything at the moment. I want to shrivel up and blow away. Alas, that only happens in Indiana Jones movies.
Let's talk about ol' Indy, then. Here I am at a facility where the VCR still works and there are such choices as Karate Kid I and II alongside White Chicks and Somersby. We chose Indiana Jones, which brought up the line (internally) from The Last Crusade, "You have chosen... wisely."
Of course I forget how unspecial the effects can be, how over-orchestrated the score can be, how completely bizarre the plot can be. For whatever reason, the lead actress wound up dressed in long silky white gowns - the better to be torn and frayed and reveal more skin? Clearly the production team looked at the story boards, loved the look of the shroud on the woman's body, and thought, "Hmm... but how can we get her in a gown? Officer's ball in Cairo? ... That's ridiculous. She's a... seamstress! And carries samples with her everywhere! ... No... How about we get a pervy Frenchman to dress her up like a doll in a random drinking scene! Yeah, that's the ticket!"
And then how much more ridiculous is it that I wound up incorporating this idea in my unavoidable nightmares? I have sets of them, to make it easier on myself. There are Exposure nightmares, Responsibility nightmares, Victim nightmares and Oh My God I Have the Sickest Mind nightmares. And then there are night terrors, but I digress.
So the Exposure nightmare goes like this: They (y'know, Them) ask me to put on the same dress this woman wears in the film. Of course it's a size 4 and I'm a size 40 and there's no spandex (was there spandex in 1981? I'll have to research. Or perhaps they were going for historical accuracy.) At any rate, the dress doesn't go on over my head or up my legs. I can't get in it sideways or backwards or upside down. But they're knocking on my door and asking to come in to complete the "fitting." I also have a large wound on my back that's bleeding and it's staining the dress and I know I will be in trouble on top of being too fat to fit in the dress. And then it rips. Ffrrrreep. Fuck.
Now the costume crew come in and they yell at me, and then I'm sort of stuck in this dress but I have to pee, and no one will let me leave the room, and I start crying and they yell at me some more, and there's no more material to make a new dress and it was spun from Chinese silk from the ancient Wang Chun dynasty or some shit...
In case you were idly wondering whether or not I'm able to see the humor in these dreams, the answer is... not while I'm dreaming them. I feel the red hot shame and misery and fear, and any comic elements elude me until at least the next day, sometimes two days later.
Did you know there's a med for nightmares? Or I should say there's a med for high blood pressure that has an off-label use as a nightmare cure. I'm on it now and it mostly works - that is, I've had fewer flashbacks and night terrors. But I still have these Exposure dreams and Responsibility dreams (where I'm juggling nine babies with brittle bone syndrome and the oven is on but empty and my grandmother is slowly but steadily rolling away in her wheelchair toward a massive cliff). Of course, this miracle drug makes me dizzy and - go fig - messes with my blood pressure, but I like to think these are just the adorable quirks of a new friend I'm gettin' to know. As long as it doesn't chew with its mouth open, I think I can take the quirks.
I suppose, then, we have our answer: What do we do with a broken JoBiv?
Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy! Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy... etc. Or perhaps,
Send her to McLean and watch her closely?
Oh, gosh, these are fun... Verse three: Throw out all her shit and plan her funeral!
All right, that's not funny. Outside of McLean, anyway.
Send her off to sleep and never wake her
Make her eat her food and take her showers
Call her on the phone and make her blubber...
Tell her to go back to work already...
Honestly, I could go on. Laugh at all her jokes as if they're funny!
To be honest, I don't care to hear your answers. I don't want to think or grow or challenge anything at the moment. I want to shrivel up and blow away. Alas, that only happens in Indiana Jones movies.
Let's talk about ol' Indy, then. Here I am at a facility where the VCR still works and there are such choices as Karate Kid I and II alongside White Chicks and Somersby. We chose Indiana Jones, which brought up the line (internally) from The Last Crusade, "You have chosen... wisely."
Of course I forget how unspecial the effects can be, how over-orchestrated the score can be, how completely bizarre the plot can be. For whatever reason, the lead actress wound up dressed in long silky white gowns - the better to be torn and frayed and reveal more skin? Clearly the production team looked at the story boards, loved the look of the shroud on the woman's body, and thought, "Hmm... but how can we get her in a gown? Officer's ball in Cairo? ... That's ridiculous. She's a... seamstress! And carries samples with her everywhere! ... No... How about we get a pervy Frenchman to dress her up like a doll in a random drinking scene! Yeah, that's the ticket!"
And then how much more ridiculous is it that I wound up incorporating this idea in my unavoidable nightmares? I have sets of them, to make it easier on myself. There are Exposure nightmares, Responsibility nightmares, Victim nightmares and Oh My God I Have the Sickest Mind nightmares. And then there are night terrors, but I digress.
So the Exposure nightmare goes like this: They (y'know, Them) ask me to put on the same dress this woman wears in the film. Of course it's a size 4 and I'm a size 40 and there's no spandex (was there spandex in 1981? I'll have to research. Or perhaps they were going for historical accuracy.) At any rate, the dress doesn't go on over my head or up my legs. I can't get in it sideways or backwards or upside down. But they're knocking on my door and asking to come in to complete the "fitting." I also have a large wound on my back that's bleeding and it's staining the dress and I know I will be in trouble on top of being too fat to fit in the dress. And then it rips. Ffrrrreep. Fuck.
Now the costume crew come in and they yell at me, and then I'm sort of stuck in this dress but I have to pee, and no one will let me leave the room, and I start crying and they yell at me some more, and there's no more material to make a new dress and it was spun from Chinese silk from the ancient Wang Chun dynasty or some shit...
In case you were idly wondering whether or not I'm able to see the humor in these dreams, the answer is... not while I'm dreaming them. I feel the red hot shame and misery and fear, and any comic elements elude me until at least the next day, sometimes two days later.
Did you know there's a med for nightmares? Or I should say there's a med for high blood pressure that has an off-label use as a nightmare cure. I'm on it now and it mostly works - that is, I've had fewer flashbacks and night terrors. But I still have these Exposure dreams and Responsibility dreams (where I'm juggling nine babies with brittle bone syndrome and the oven is on but empty and my grandmother is slowly but steadily rolling away in her wheelchair toward a massive cliff). Of course, this miracle drug makes me dizzy and - go fig - messes with my blood pressure, but I like to think these are just the adorable quirks of a new friend I'm gettin' to know. As long as it doesn't chew with its mouth open, I think I can take the quirks.
I suppose, then, we have our answer: What do we do with a broken JoBiv?
Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy! Fill her up with drugs that make her dizzy... etc. Or perhaps,
Send her to McLean and watch her closely?
Oh, gosh, these are fun... Verse three: Throw out all her shit and plan her funeral!
All right, that's not funny. Outside of McLean, anyway.
Send her off to sleep and never wake her
Make her eat her food and take her showers
Call her on the phone and make her blubber...
Tell her to go back to work already...
Honestly, I could go on. Laugh at all her jokes as if they're funny!
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Self-imposed grounding and other meaningless gestures
I could easily force a causality between my mental health and the bedraggled state of my bedroom. There is some truth to that, realistically, but the topic exhausts itself rather quickly.
It should be simple enough to say that my bedroom is a mess, but why not indulge in detail? There are more books and sheet music than there are shelves to store them. I have three different laundry hampers (for three kinds of laundry: bedding, towels and clothes) and they are all full, and I have a collection of boxes full of mail I'm afraid to open alongside wedding gifts and baby gifts and Just-thinking-of-you gifts that I may never send. Filling in the cracks, there are sewing boxes, CD's, an old laptop that holds an archive of writing that may or may not be inaccessible, and somewhere in the morass a broken thumb drive that acted as the back-up for that archive. As long as we're in the catalog of things I cannot throw away but should, there is also one Pooh Bear, one stuffed monkey, a small, red, generic stuffed monster, a collection of single earrings, various failed hairstyling products, and a very beat up 10 CD boom box that usually functions, but does not read burned discs. It's that old.
If my building were to catch on fire and I were forced to choose what to save, I would probably grab my bras (hey, they're expensive), my wallet, and not much else.
Knowing this, I thought it would be simple to clean my room. I told myself, "you were too busy before, spending all your time with Sir Knight, and couldn't keep up with the normal flow of things." And then it went something like, "You were too heartbroken over Sir Knight to move, so clearly the effort of cleaning was beyond you." And then, "It's beautiful outside. How could you waste this day in your bedroom?" And also, "You keep the shared spaces very clean, so it's okay if you live in a pool of your own cess."
Mostly I look around the room and think, "none of this is important. Or maybe all of it is important. In this state of mind, I should not be allowed to make decisions."
Then the first relief of a fall breeze whipped through the room. I was reminded of the ol' back to school hustle, when I would clean my room after the summer vacation, or unpack my dorm room, or move to yet another apartment. I've been here for at least six years, although I'm honestly fuzzy about the dates. That's six Augusts of not packing, not gleaning, not moving. True, my mother cleaned and rearranged my room when I had back surgery, but that hardly counts.
So this weekend I had enough of my brattiness and grounded myself to my room until I cleaned it, young lady!
I report that any visitor who might happen by my room would at least feel there was a floor to walk on, and that I could access my bed without hurting myself or others. The space is filled with clean laundry and thus the scent has improved. Art stuff has been stowed in the closet shelves and there are whole square inches of uncluttered territory on the top of my dresser.
I'm a little bit pleased. Another part of me wants to haul everything out and burn it, leave nothing but a mattress and a lamp and a suitcase of clothes. What is the point of things? Why have fancy dresses and high heels and make-up? For what party? Why save books I enjoyed but will never read again? Why keep books I will never read in the first place? Why have three black sweaters of varying shape and warmth? Why have winter socks? Why save the photo album of friends who are either dead or estranged? Why have nail polish? Why can I not throw away old calendars, paychecks, christmas cards, birthday gifts that never suited me? Why why why surround myself in battlements of mediocrity and past lives. Why force myself to feel heartbreak over and over as I come across another letter, a snip of ribbon, a half-empty journal, a mix tape, a broken watch...
Forget it. Put in some Sam Cooke and fold laundry and don't you dare think. Don't think.
It should be simple enough to say that my bedroom is a mess, but why not indulge in detail? There are more books and sheet music than there are shelves to store them. I have three different laundry hampers (for three kinds of laundry: bedding, towels and clothes) and they are all full, and I have a collection of boxes full of mail I'm afraid to open alongside wedding gifts and baby gifts and Just-thinking-of-you gifts that I may never send. Filling in the cracks, there are sewing boxes, CD's, an old laptop that holds an archive of writing that may or may not be inaccessible, and somewhere in the morass a broken thumb drive that acted as the back-up for that archive. As long as we're in the catalog of things I cannot throw away but should, there is also one Pooh Bear, one stuffed monkey, a small, red, generic stuffed monster, a collection of single earrings, various failed hairstyling products, and a very beat up 10 CD boom box that usually functions, but does not read burned discs. It's that old.
If my building were to catch on fire and I were forced to choose what to save, I would probably grab my bras (hey, they're expensive), my wallet, and not much else.
Knowing this, I thought it would be simple to clean my room. I told myself, "you were too busy before, spending all your time with Sir Knight, and couldn't keep up with the normal flow of things." And then it went something like, "You were too heartbroken over Sir Knight to move, so clearly the effort of cleaning was beyond you." And then, "It's beautiful outside. How could you waste this day in your bedroom?" And also, "You keep the shared spaces very clean, so it's okay if you live in a pool of your own cess."
Mostly I look around the room and think, "none of this is important. Or maybe all of it is important. In this state of mind, I should not be allowed to make decisions."
Then the first relief of a fall breeze whipped through the room. I was reminded of the ol' back to school hustle, when I would clean my room after the summer vacation, or unpack my dorm room, or move to yet another apartment. I've been here for at least six years, although I'm honestly fuzzy about the dates. That's six Augusts of not packing, not gleaning, not moving. True, my mother cleaned and rearranged my room when I had back surgery, but that hardly counts.
So this weekend I had enough of my brattiness and grounded myself to my room until I cleaned it, young lady!
I report that any visitor who might happen by my room would at least feel there was a floor to walk on, and that I could access my bed without hurting myself or others. The space is filled with clean laundry and thus the scent has improved. Art stuff has been stowed in the closet shelves and there are whole square inches of uncluttered territory on the top of my dresser.
I'm a little bit pleased. Another part of me wants to haul everything out and burn it, leave nothing but a mattress and a lamp and a suitcase of clothes. What is the point of things? Why have fancy dresses and high heels and make-up? For what party? Why save books I enjoyed but will never read again? Why keep books I will never read in the first place? Why have three black sweaters of varying shape and warmth? Why have winter socks? Why save the photo album of friends who are either dead or estranged? Why have nail polish? Why can I not throw away old calendars, paychecks, christmas cards, birthday gifts that never suited me? Why why why surround myself in battlements of mediocrity and past lives. Why force myself to feel heartbreak over and over as I come across another letter, a snip of ribbon, a half-empty journal, a mix tape, a broken watch...
Forget it. Put in some Sam Cooke and fold laundry and don't you dare think. Don't think.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
At least ten years and many moons ago...
We were coming in from Waltham, which I tried to pronounce with savvy and Britishness as “Wallthum” and was immediately corrected. There is a Ham in Waltham.*
Why was I in Walth Ham? My best friend from Victor Senior High School was getting her business degree (and hangin’ with pote smockers and joining a performing arts frat) at Bentley College. They had a bus that ran into Harvard Square so the young’ns could get a taste of city life. We were on that bus and I was feeling intrepid.
Now, to be told you’re going to a big city and to be left on a curb outside an Applebee's would be disorienting to most explorers. Luckily, my anticipation was not at all dampened since I come from a town small and safe enough that I never had to learn how to use a house key until I moved to college. Did you even know there’s a learning curve for turning a house key? I was on the embarrassing end of it. I hope this helps you imagine the utter culture shock of spending time in places that had a dense enough population to necessitate mass transportation. In my narrow world, only really seedy people or kids going to community college who refused to live with their parents rented apartments. It may be true, and I hope it isn't, that you can own a trailer park in Victor for the price of renting a studio in Cambridge, Mass. Renting was horribly shameful in my town, as far as I knew. It wasn't done. Likewise, every family I knew had 1:1 car to licensed-driver ratio. Sometimes the youngest licensed driver got the '84 Hatchback from Hell, of course, because who could trust a 16 year old with a sweet ride like a '97 Ford Taurus?
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Remember the High School parking lot? All that unbridled horsepower...
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Well.. a copy shop called Copy Cop. (No, I have no self-restraint and I will not apologize.)
Also, trees, red brick sidewalks, windy streets that seemed to start and end and turn into one-ways as they pleased, steeples, gables, trolley lines, hotels, falafel stands, cafes, and people, lovely self-involved people everywhere. I took a deep breath and said to myself (and perhaps others), “Ah, it even smells like Harvard,” which, I suppose, means Harvard smells like a Greek restaurant, an oily subway air vent, autumn leaves and cigarette butts, and if you’re really lucky, a whiff of that homeless dude who has peed himself so often in each one of the four pairs of pants he now wears simultaneously that you need not have him in your sight to know he is standing in an intersection four blocks upwind of you. Well, that’s how it smelled in the fall of 1999, anyway.
And newsprint. I almost forgot how the newspapers fluttered around corners as the buses whipped past, how they accumulated in sticky sheaves between the slats of park benches, how they skated over the cobbled sidewalks like untidy ghosts with pressing agendas.
All of this is to say that these sense memories comprise the core of what I believe fall should be in New England, even now. Even as I’ve seen the bookstores close, the cafes give way to froyo bars, the face of each passerby private and closed with mundane intentions, now staring into his or her own tiny computer, plugged in and shut out.
This is my tenth anniversary of my move to Massachusetts. For the first time I cannot answer automatically when people ask whether I’ll ever move back home to Victor. It has been so easy to say, “HELL no, NEVER (and don’t tell my mom I said that, she’ll cry.)" But these days I can't remember why I came, besides this nagging thought that I was running from something that seemed gargantuan and has shrunk considerably over the not-unfriendly damage of passing years.
Why be here? Because my entire adult life has been invested here, yes. Because I love the ability to jump on a train to get to the ocean. Because all** of my books are here and it would be a bitch to move them. Because... although my original dreams and resolutions of becoming Something Important never quite blossomed into reality, something else has stuck with me. I made a major and brave decision to be myself outside of the tiny fishbowl that raised me, knowing I could drown in the crowds and never be missed. I live here, and the dude at the Post Office knows I send presents to my nieces and nephew for their birthdays. My neighbor with the motorized wheelchair and aging terrier nods to me when I say hello. The T driver says "Have a good day," after I say, "thank you." I have fallen in love here, been trampled and forgiven and slandered and resurrected here. I have broken here, and grown up around the pieces. Why be here?
*This is potentially silly if you happen to know that Brandeis University is also situated in Waltham and you know that Brandeis is primarily populated by Jewish students and faculty and offers Glatt Kosher items in its main dining room. That is to say, there’s at least one place where ham is made to feel unwelcome.
**Okay, most
Monday, October 10, 2011
fragile stuff
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| Faded Roses, Charles Rennie Mackintosh |
Elizabeth was the kind of girl who would silently hold a grudge for a good long while if you, say, didn't say "please," when asking her to pass the potatoes. It wouldn't be the kind of grudge that turns into a vendetta, just a strong demerit in her overall tally of your trustworthiness and respectability. So, yes, she would take it personally if you forgot her birthday. She would find a way to mention it in passing to send a shock of shame through you on the sly.
I've been trained, therefore, to start feeling guilty right around the beginning of September. I start thinking of sending her a card or a little gift - maybe a cookbook - and then I think of how she doesn't accumulate crap, really. She has maybe a dozen shirts and washes and wears them carefully. She purges her kitchen, her library and her office regularly, gleaning only the necessary pieces. Every space she rules is elegantly composed and purposeful. How do you give a gift to a woman who has chosen every small detail of her life?
Well, almost. She did not choose to get pregnant while she was here in Boston and had several credits to finish up on her Master's degree. She didn't exactly choose to move in with her in-laws in Santa Barbara. She didn't choose to have her sweet cat served up as lunch to the local coyote. She most definitely did not choose cervical cancer.
I suppose that by now we know that I have the fairly human need to distance myself from things that hurt. I practically shunned my friends from St. Bonaventure after Shane died. I can't bear to speak about my mother's mother, or even go into the part of my parents' basement where I cried myself nauseous after returning from the ER. And here I am again, in full ability to communicate with people I respect and love, who supported me in my intellectual growth and personal flounderings, but I do not want to talk about jLiz. I won't forget her; no, I will curl myself around my guilt for every birthday I missed, for the times I didn't call, for not knowing how bad it all was. I'll cultivate and feed that guilt and make very sure it continues to sink its teeth deeper into my flesh.
I asked the Current Man in My Life if he noticed that I know a lot of dead people. Then I immediately said, "well of course you have. I keep inviting them over." How can I know what I'm doing and not stop it?
A few weeks ago, Labor Day actually, I snuck home on an overpriced flight to see family. Remember when this was a terrible idea for my sanity? Well, clearly, I'm old. And things have changed. Possibly it's this sense of entropy... that if I don't take every moment I can to see my nieces and nephew and brothers and parents, they will wither away and fade from me. The human body, it appears, is made of nothing terribly permanent. We are composed of fragile stuff.
And so I got on that flight on a whim, asking my roommate to throw a few things in my backpack and meet me at work so I could make the trip. My Uncle Maui was home on what he called his "Aloha Means Goodbye Tour." My grandmother Biv is 93 years old and pretty much takes it personally that we allowed her to get so old and worn out. She doesn't want to make it to 94. Uncle Maui spent days with her, just letting her bitch and watching her nod off while reading, sitting by her while she slept. He got infuriated and bored and fell in love with her - all the truest familial feelings a person can have. And he said goodbye.
I didn't see her at all because his time with her seemed too precious. I didn't want to interfere with this capsuled moment that I wish I'd had with Shane or Elizabeth or... well let's not list. But on the flight back I found myself thinking of her hands, my mother rubbing lotion into the soft, lax skin. She likes rose scents and rosy hues, and the backs of her hands are so much like rose petals after they droop on the stem. Soft, too soft, and fragile. The coils of your fingerprint seem to bite into that thin and tender petal and it wants to rip or fall.
I am so painfully aware of the ephemeral. I am aching for the strong people who, ultimately, fade and rip and fall limp in scattered petals.
Clearly, shoving this awareness into a tiny Box of Awful To Hide Away... well, it's not working. Not only that, it's created a sort of mottled lens through which I obliquely see the world, one that I know is beautiful and captivating but have not felt I could bear to see at full strength. I'm vowing, again, to be alive, in full knowledge of the complicated contract we sign when we decide to be hurt, overjoyed, ignored and thrilled and disappointed. I'm vowing to allow all things, again; to be a cog in the machine in faith that it will produce incredible joy alongside the suffering.
I will try, anyway, and I will tell you about it. Maybe you will hear me.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
and also red.
I was up in my parents' room, Baby Bean in her christmas outfit finally, after days of wearing nothing but her pajamas. She's six now, getting longer but still so small next to kids her age. Her face has changed shape, gone from cute to astonishingly pretty.
I brushed her hair back from her face as she sat primly on my mother's vanity stool. She was busy messing with the three mirrors my mother keeps there now that she has trifocals.
"Whoa, I'm upside down," she said, leaning into the first and going silly on me.
"Get up closer until you're right side up," I said. She approached the mirror slowly, expecting a trick of some kind.
"There!" she said, her nose nearly touching the surface.
"Why does Gramma have three mirrors?" she asked.
"Because each one shows her a different distance. She sees in three distances."
She sat up again and told me she wanted her hair way up, "like this," she said, with a fist on the top of her head, "like a rock star."
I brushed and brushed her soft hair. It's brown with a red tint to it and lighter streaks. It would be impossible to replicate that color in a salon. As I brushed she moved her head a bit, leaning into the caress of the brush like a cat. I caught her eye in the mirror.
"Actually, I think," she said, "that with his outfit, maybe not the rock star hair."
"What do you want, peanut?"
"Umm... I dunno."
"Braids?"
"Yeah, braids is good!"
"Okay, but you have to sit still for a while."
She sat up straight again and put her hands in her lap. I chattered to her about christmas, her brother, grandma's amazing tri-focal eyes. At some point I noticed she was staring at me again. I thought suddenly of this role reversal, the many times I sat here while my mother wrestled with my tangles and attempted french braids, later on when she helped me blow it dry and straighten it. I used to watch her face, the furrow in her forehead and the hairpins in her lips. She would talk around them as I asked her questions, a ponytail holder tight around her strong wrist.
"Aunt Jo, why is your hair brown and also red?" asked the Bean.
I smiled at her in the mirror as I completed the first braid. "Because I am cheap and also lazy," I said. This joke was not funny to her, so I gave her the real answer.
"Because I went to the salon and had it colored, like your mommy does." She nodded. "But it's been a while since I had it dyed. Now you can see my real color." She squinched up her nose. "Can you tell which one is my real color?" I asked.
"Ummmmmmm... the brown!" she said, hopping a little in her seat.
"Smart girl."
There was another answer I could have given her. I could have told her I don't see the point in spending money on myself these days. I could tell her I barely notice what I look like from day to day, only keeping to my strict patterns and rules about cleanliness and order. How do you ever tell a six year old girl that her Aunt Jo is so depressed that she can't imagine investing even that little bit in herself? It was insufferable to tell this child, the one my mother calls Jo accidentally, the one sitting just where I sat so many years ago, that I have curdled somehow and I don't know how to fix it, that I'm usually in the middle of a gesture to give up entirely.
I finished the second braid and wrapped a tiny clear ponytail holder around it.
"Okay, shake to see if it stays," I said. She shook her head fiercely from side to side, laughing. "Good. All done. Go show Grandma."
She skipped, actually skipped out of the room. I sat in front of the mirror and pulled my hair until my fingers hurt and the fierce need to cry melted away.
I brushed her hair back from her face as she sat primly on my mother's vanity stool. She was busy messing with the three mirrors my mother keeps there now that she has trifocals.
"Whoa, I'm upside down," she said, leaning into the first and going silly on me.
"Get up closer until you're right side up," I said. She approached the mirror slowly, expecting a trick of some kind.
"There!" she said, her nose nearly touching the surface.
"Why does Gramma have three mirrors?" she asked.
"Because each one shows her a different distance. She sees in three distances."
She sat up again and told me she wanted her hair way up, "like this," she said, with a fist on the top of her head, "like a rock star."
I brushed and brushed her soft hair. It's brown with a red tint to it and lighter streaks. It would be impossible to replicate that color in a salon. As I brushed she moved her head a bit, leaning into the caress of the brush like a cat. I caught her eye in the mirror.
"Actually, I think," she said, "that with his outfit, maybe not the rock star hair."
"What do you want, peanut?"
"Umm... I dunno."
"Braids?"
"Yeah, braids is good!"
"Okay, but you have to sit still for a while."
She sat up straight again and put her hands in her lap. I chattered to her about christmas, her brother, grandma's amazing tri-focal eyes. At some point I noticed she was staring at me again. I thought suddenly of this role reversal, the many times I sat here while my mother wrestled with my tangles and attempted french braids, later on when she helped me blow it dry and straighten it. I used to watch her face, the furrow in her forehead and the hairpins in her lips. She would talk around them as I asked her questions, a ponytail holder tight around her strong wrist.
"Aunt Jo, why is your hair brown and also red?" asked the Bean.
I smiled at her in the mirror as I completed the first braid. "Because I am cheap and also lazy," I said. This joke was not funny to her, so I gave her the real answer.
"Because I went to the salon and had it colored, like your mommy does." She nodded. "But it's been a while since I had it dyed. Now you can see my real color." She squinched up her nose. "Can you tell which one is my real color?" I asked.
"Ummmmmmm... the brown!" she said, hopping a little in her seat.
"Smart girl."
There was another answer I could have given her. I could have told her I don't see the point in spending money on myself these days. I could tell her I barely notice what I look like from day to day, only keeping to my strict patterns and rules about cleanliness and order. How do you ever tell a six year old girl that her Aunt Jo is so depressed that she can't imagine investing even that little bit in herself? It was insufferable to tell this child, the one my mother calls Jo accidentally, the one sitting just where I sat so many years ago, that I have curdled somehow and I don't know how to fix it, that I'm usually in the middle of a gesture to give up entirely.
I finished the second braid and wrapped a tiny clear ponytail holder around it.
"Okay, shake to see if it stays," I said. She shook her head fiercely from side to side, laughing. "Good. All done. Go show Grandma."
She skipped, actually skipped out of the room. I sat in front of the mirror and pulled my hair until my fingers hurt and the fierce need to cry melted away.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Seventh grade. I carried six notebooks most days for each subject, six binders, the occasional steno pad and calculator, all in a tired backpack populated by whole villages of broken pock-marked pencils and non-functional pens. The school year waxed and waned and my notebooks became predictably tattooed with notes, doodles, stains and other batterings.
I carried one folder. Inside this folder I kept the loose leaf collection of the awkward stories I wrote and let no one see. They were halting, haunting and very likely unfleshed. At the time I thought writing could only be an organic process – an unplanned and unsupervised ride powered by some punch-drunk muse.
The stories were universally dark… about suicide pacts, deadly car accidents, people wasting away with horrible diseases. If I had known what Goth or Emo meant, I might have found a niche. Perhaps not… I was horrified by the nightmare highway my muse continually chose. I was afraid and fascinated by my own propensity for darkness. It was manageable, however, because no one else knew.
It was eighth grade. That was the year terrible things began to happen. A classmate, already socially shunned and ridiculed, found out that his mother died during the school day. He disintegrated before our eyes into a mass of howls. That same year another classmate’s obese sister was found dead. There were rumors; she’d overdosed on diet pills, she’d had a heart attack, she’d choked on a sandwich, her brother killed her with emotional abuse. I felt I knew the truth then. These horrible things happened because I wrote them.
I remember so well the feeling that the events around me were like a camera’s iris, closing into tighter focus. I was choking inside that aperture like it was a 360 degree guillotine. Now I see that my brain was ready for all of it. I was an open soul, begging to be trod on and tried. I didn’t create the events; they blazed inward, highlighting pre-existing sensitivities. It was as though I had an acute sunburn in the winter time and was utterly surprised when dishwater scalded me.
I think of this today because my vocabulary of this life has expanded once more and opened me to new sensitivities. Where before I thought of cancer as a general, unfathomable disease, I can now hear the word cancer across a crowded subway train and it sets my brain reeling. I think of the women who call me at work begging for an earlier surgery. I think of the wheelchair-bound patients in the elevator with their wigs askew and their fragile, bare ankles. I think of how a nurse talked of one of her patients, how he already smelled like death.
So at my brother’s wedding my ears twitched open to the family friend, the woman we call “Aunt” and whose husband we call “Uncle.” Her cancer, I hadn’t known, was one I deal with daily. She asked me if I could pull strings to have her seen at Mass General. I told her, honestly, that I’m new there, and I have no idea. I didn’t want to discuss it further. I hated the immediacy of knowing the possibilities.
And now, a month later, another family friend was claimed by cancer. I saw the New York
Is it possible I was so self-involved before that I never noticed that the women I love on this earth are dying? Is there some energy in the world that draws these coincidences together? I want to believe that it has to do with this sensitivity, like the honing of a musical skill. I can hear the pitch and color of the word cancer in its full spectrum now. It existed before I could hear it and won’t stop its cacophonous echo now that I can.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
a baleful bachelorette
Galloping toward me with terrifying velocity, here comes my ten-year high school reunion. Put aside the usual stressors of the holidays and think of the horror of facing high school all over again. I wasn’t so good at it the first time.
I freely acknowledge that I’m not actually going back to high school. It’s not like the movies – we’re not queuing up outside the gym in nice suits and shoulder-padded dresses, playing grown-up in the nursery. The class president (who’s actually not a douche, thank goodness) organized some space at a bar big enough to accommodate a crowd.
Not sure who will show up, but I know I won’t remember names or details. We will ask each other, “So what are you doing these days?” and, “How’s life in
It’s occurred to me that I should have a sentence prepared that I can repeat on command; something simple and only slightly artful where facts are smudged. I need something translucent but not transparent. No one need know how much I’ve struggled over the last ten years, right?
My parents, who were in town this weekend for a chorus concert, bless’m, reminded me that my view of my own life is a bit exclusive these days. My mother reminded me of grad school, travels abroad, publishing, non-profits,
Here’s the fascinating thing, however: my mother kept bringing up my single status. She said that I could tell them I was “in love, and now looking again,” to appease them. I know that a ton of people from my class are married or attached, but it never occurred to me to be uncomfortable as a bachelorette. She mentioned it enough to make me realize how preoccupied she is with my marriage prospects, or total lack thereof. This must be one of the things she worries about when she frets away with thoughts of me. To her, I must be lonely.
So I present to you yet another dimension of parent-induced insanity. While they’re here they not only convince me that I’m unstable, unable to support myself, sickly and pitiful, but now I’m also incredibly lonely – adrift in the world without a captain to steer me right.
Yes, I know that’s ridiculous. I know I should have some rallying anger against the very thought. I should dig up thoughts of all my excellent friends, tepid dates, excellent daily flirtings; all the things that show my own agency in creating connections in this city. Alas, there’s something tempting in my post-parental-visit emotional hangover that pushes me toward self-pity. I am alone. I am lonely. I am unloved… even (gasp!) ten years after High School. I am a hopeless case.
So this is the feeling that propels tv heroines to take a stranger to a party and pretend he’s the fiancée. Silly.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Nuggets
On the summer days or presidents’ week vacation, I’d follow my mother around the house, curious about what she did on a normal day. With the boys somewhat self-sufficient and me always more responsible than they were, she took on the onus of our stuffed house, her parents, and my father. We mostly took up emotional energy, I realize now, and actively undid all her work on the house without realizing it.
We always joked about my mother leaving glasses of water all over the house. In her bustling she’d realize she was thirsty, forget she’d already filled and left a glass of water around the kitchen, and bring the next cup of water with her wherever she was headed. She’d get busy or called away by her obnoxious kids, and later that evening we’d have to collect her water glasses when we ran the dishwasher. More often than not, one of the glasses would end up spilled before the day was over. Thus they were christened, “water bombs.”
I suppose in a house of six people the logic goes thisaway: Look, there’s a glass of water; I wonder if it’s mine. It can’t possibly be mine, there are five other people, plus guests, roaming this house right now. At least three of them have hacking colds, too. If I move it, one of the kids will yell about me throwing out his glass of water. I will leave it.
So when some skinny elbow or flailing overexcited hand brushed one off a shelf, or the hearth, or the washing machine, or the end table… the permutations are endless. We all did it, and we all smiled patiently, laughed together, and screamed out, “Water Bomb!” My mother rolled her eyes, surely thinking they couldn’t all be her glasses of water, and handed us the paper towels.
Just as a game, though, when I was following my mother around on those rainy vacation days, I’d count myself lucky if I found her morning tea. It was never anywhere near the kitchen. I figured out it was closest to the location of the first errand of the day, left cold and lonely in a linen closet, the basement, the shelf above the recycling in the garage, next to the stack of library books that needed to go back. I’d find it and rejoice privately, the real thing after ten false-gold nuggets in the form of water bombs. And before I’d wander back to the kitchen with it, or offer it to her wherever she was, I’d take a sip.
Black tea, English breakfast or the equivalent, not enough sugar for me, a lot of skim milk, stone cold. Maybe this explains why I can never drink mine hot.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Speaking of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum...
I have no idea who this girl is, but she looks like fun. Click away.
My favorite painting has suffered from my neglect. I should go visit. This is El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent. There are, I believe, at least two other Sargents in the museum. One is a portrait of Isabella herself with the backdrop of an oriental rug, its pattern like a halo or crown around her head. The other... well I just think there's another, but I don't recall which. I know the MFA has that one with the four little girls in the big room... forget what it's called but it's amazing.
I bring up this painting because my roommate gave me a kind of compliment last night. I was busy putting leftover chicken on this one wine colored plate we have. I said, "I love this plate," because I often say happy things like that. She said something like, "That plate makes me think of you." That may sound odd to you. It did to me. She qualified the statement: "That COLOR makes me think of you."
As darling as it is that the H-Bomb thinks of me (I hope it's a happy, yay-I-have-a-decent-roomie kind of thought) when she sees that shade of red, I kind of like the fact that she associates me with the color. It's one of my favorite colors, and I didn't think I wore it so much as I must. I guess I chose that color as an identity at some point. I want to be more like it - deep and a little mysterious, with hints of both sensuality and joviality.
I was thinking of how a plate could remind H-Bomb of me, and it led me to this thought: I always think of the color yellow when I think of that Sargent painting. Why? Because you almost say "yellow" when you say "El Jaleo?" Because of it's placement in the museum among Moroccan artifacts and tiles, and Morocco makes me think of sun on sandy walls and they are slighty yellow? I've never been to Morocco, so I could be full of crap about that. It could be the proximity of the painting to the inner courtyard garden - perhaps a yellow lily I saw there... Maybe it's the unnatural light hitting the dancer's arms and face and casting her into such dramatic shadow.
I have no idea.
But I used to wear yellow all the time when I was wee. A series of school portraits from grade two to maybe six show my face in various summer-tanned shades, my shoulders and chest in a bright banana-yellow shirt. I remember each outfit very clearly. I chose each one because it was not pink, foremost, and also because I always thought yellow was the equivalent of softness. Who would make a yellow shirt out of burlap? No one. Yellow is the color of chick feathers and lemon merangue.
At any rate, I'm taking votes from the Peanut Gallery. When did I go red, as it were?
HAHahahahaha... I just thought of the big U! Perhaps I've found the answer. Still taking votes.
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