Continued evolution of a paragraph
My mother’s first lesson shortly after birth: deep attachment is followed by corrosive loss. The Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers is filled with the bereaved. Somnolent girls in the late, leaden months of pregnancy, inward, deliberate, walk slowly through its gray halls. They will soon join the other inmates, shell-shocked new mothers, swaddled newborns clutched in ambivalent embraces, jiggling, shushing, jiggling, shushing. This is how I picture her birth: hazy trauma of labor, discovery delivered as flat fact – “it’s a girl.” My biological grandmother holds her freshly-bathed daughter, names her Lois. Over the next six weeks she feeds, diapers, jiggles, shushes. Her daughter calms to her warm, familiar scent, the intimacy in their gazes is bone-deep. But ephemeral. When the time comes, she signs the adoption papers, hands her wailing baby to the waiting nurse. It is as clean as a guillotine strike.
The next paragraph is much harder -- how can I describe the mix of my mismatched grandparents, pushy aunt, and guilty-from-the-get-go mother? Without getting too deeply into it? Do I devote a paragraph to my grandfather's accident? What about John the Murderer? Or Jim the Laminator? We'll see.
Existential angst, Part 2
Well, this is me. I can't make up what I am not. When I'm feeling better, it will be about writing. When life feels like a cruel joke to be endured until my extinction via death, that's what I'll write about. At least I'm still writing.
So, today: The dream hangover -- usually a nap thing, or middle of the night phenomenon for me. I don't always remember the dream, but I wake up with a sense of dread, or a feeling of failure that cannot be recovered from, or with the gnawing ache of permanent loss. Today I had a napless nap attempt in an empty house ideal for sweet sleep. I emerged from bed still tired, thoughts tangled and knotted.
I felt old and sad and crazy for thinking I could transcend anything with writing or thinking or interacting with others.
Life is a blind march towards death. When I emerged from bed, I knew my life was irrationally -- crazily -- lucky, and undeserved. I was sure my feeling of dread was because H and C must have been in a fatal car accident while I was not sleeping. The cheese stands alone.
They came home untouched, alive.
No K & Mom story writing today. Definitely tomorrow, though. I'm not that bad off.