existential angst
Crying the rodent death blues / The beast in me
01 October 2008 11:40 AM Categories: The struggle
| Childhood
hangover
I had a reputation for
being melodramatic.
Take the case of Happy.
Happy (short for Happy Easter) was a golden hamster my grandmother gave to me for Easter 1976. He came complete with a Habitrail, one of those cages with a main unit attached to smaller annexes via clear tubes. It was just like a wild hamster warren except translucent, plastic, and above ground. Watching Happy scurry through the tubes, from wheel to main cage to tiny den was amusing. He impressed me with his ability to get through tiny spaces. I would scoop him out of the cage and cup my hands around him, leaving an opening that got smaller and smaller over time. Happy was always able to make it through.
One winter morning, hamster feed in hand, I opened the Habitrail and discovered it empty. All of that time spent squeezing through my fingers had been training for Happy’s escape. His disappearance was upsetting, but even more devastating was the discovery a few days later of his tiny corpse in the basement. It was stiffened with rigor mortis, hamster toes stuck in a permanent curl. Happy’s last meal had been rat poison.
By the age of seven, I had lived through a few pet deaths, all of the feline variety. Sheba had been hit by a car, Amber was anemic, and Regis bothered his neutering stitches until infection creeped in. Each death brought tears, but with Happy it was different. For many months after the hamster’s untimely death, I rode a wave of grief. On long rides to my grandparents’ or on the walk to school, the loss would hit me.
Dinnertime was the toughest, with all that time to think under the monotony of adult conversation. My mother, her someday husband Jim and I would be sitting at the white picnic table in the kitchen and I would feel a pang. The spinach soufflé would grow cold on my fork as I stared past Mom and out the window into the backyard. Happy was buried back there, his corpse stuffed for one final time into a toilet paper tube. I imagined him in better days, pushing his way through my open-toed shoes, doing endless laps on the wheel, escaping from my fingers. I couldn’t contain my sigh, the big exhale of emotion.
“Do you know what I’m thinking about now?” Long silence, then another sigh, “I’m thinking about Happy.”
These words of grief, repeated many times over that year, were not taken seriously.
By age eleven I was ready to try rodent stewardship again, this time with a gerbil. Perhaps it is a sign of Happy’s hold on my heart that I no longer remember the gerbil’s name. He (or she) was also cut down in the prime of life, a victim of illness. He had been listless all day, sitting in a corner of his cage, not touching his food. The gerbil refused to open his mouth whenever I presented an eyedropper full of restorative honey water. I hovered over the sickbed into evening. As night came, a summer storm rolled in. The sky flashed with lightning and my gerbil took his final breaths in an echo of thunder. After it was over, I reached out and stroked his still-warm body with an index finger. And then – an indication of my future impulses? – I immediately wrote my version of the night’s events: “Death of a Gerbil.”
My mother and Jim teased me for what they interpreted as my overemotional response to almost everything. Jim also thought I was too serious and would describe the child me as being like a 42-year-old woman (as I approach the last year of my 30s, his description makes even less sense). The labels were applied with a grain of contemptuous truth to everything from my asthmatic coughing fits that led to vomiting as well as my often-expressed desire in sixth-grade to kill myself.
Over the years I’ve learned how to regulate my external emotional responses, but I still have a flair for the melodramatic that usually comes out in my writing. For example, I started this post with some ideas about the loop of deep self-doubt that occasionally runs through my mind. The initial paragraph read very differently:
This is grown-up melodrama. Like my grief for Happy, when these feelings hit, they are genuine. I acknowledge that there are times when I feel rotten and hollow. This doesn’t mean I am rotten and hollow – my feelings are not objective reality, but to deny them and their origins would be denying part of myself, part of my internal life.
I fight these moments of darkness. But I am convinced they are part of being human and will never fully go away. We don’t want to acknowledge feelings of deep inadequacy, so most of us go around trying to pep-talk ourselves into feeling better. We don’t want to face the beast within.
The good in us, the light, is powerful. It can lift us above the void. But if you feel pangs of self-doubt, why not acknowledge the reality of the feeling, trace it as far back as you can, and move on? Don’t underestimate your ability to confront the beast.
The darkness within doesn’t define us. We are far more complex than that.
For readers who are now thinking of the Nick Lowe song, here it is, as sung live by Johnny Cash, a man whose life was defined in some part by his attempts to push through the darkness. Next post: blog of the month.
Take the case of Happy.
Happy (short for Happy Easter) was a golden hamster my grandmother gave to me for Easter 1976. He came complete with a Habitrail, one of those cages with a main unit attached to smaller annexes via clear tubes. It was just like a wild hamster warren except translucent, plastic, and above ground. Watching Happy scurry through the tubes, from wheel to main cage to tiny den was amusing. He impressed me with his ability to get through tiny spaces. I would scoop him out of the cage and cup my hands around him, leaving an opening that got smaller and smaller over time. Happy was always able to make it through.
One winter morning, hamster feed in hand, I opened the Habitrail and discovered it empty. All of that time spent squeezing through my fingers had been training for Happy’s escape. His disappearance was upsetting, but even more devastating was the discovery a few days later of his tiny corpse in the basement. It was stiffened with rigor mortis, hamster toes stuck in a permanent curl. Happy’s last meal had been rat poison.
By the age of seven, I had lived through a few pet deaths, all of the feline variety. Sheba had been hit by a car, Amber was anemic, and Regis bothered his neutering stitches until infection creeped in. Each death brought tears, but with Happy it was different. For many months after the hamster’s untimely death, I rode a wave of grief. On long rides to my grandparents’ or on the walk to school, the loss would hit me.
Dinnertime was the toughest, with all that time to think under the monotony of adult conversation. My mother, her someday husband Jim and I would be sitting at the white picnic table in the kitchen and I would feel a pang. The spinach soufflé would grow cold on my fork as I stared past Mom and out the window into the backyard. Happy was buried back there, his corpse stuffed for one final time into a toilet paper tube. I imagined him in better days, pushing his way through my open-toed shoes, doing endless laps on the wheel, escaping from my fingers. I couldn’t contain my sigh, the big exhale of emotion.
“Do you know what I’m thinking about now?” Long silence, then another sigh, “I’m thinking about Happy.”
These words of grief, repeated many times over that year, were not taken seriously.
By age eleven I was ready to try rodent stewardship again, this time with a gerbil. Perhaps it is a sign of Happy’s hold on my heart that I no longer remember the gerbil’s name. He (or she) was also cut down in the prime of life, a victim of illness. He had been listless all day, sitting in a corner of his cage, not touching his food. The gerbil refused to open his mouth whenever I presented an eyedropper full of restorative honey water. I hovered over the sickbed into evening. As night came, a summer storm rolled in. The sky flashed with lightning and my gerbil took his final breaths in an echo of thunder. After it was over, I reached out and stroked his still-warm body with an index finger. And then – an indication of my future impulses? – I immediately wrote my version of the night’s events: “Death of a Gerbil.”
My mother and Jim teased me for what they interpreted as my overemotional response to almost everything. Jim also thought I was too serious and would describe the child me as being like a 42-year-old woman (as I approach the last year of my 30s, his description makes even less sense). The labels were applied with a grain of contemptuous truth to everything from my asthmatic coughing fits that led to vomiting as well as my often-expressed desire in sixth-grade to kill myself.
Over the years I’ve learned how to regulate my external emotional responses, but I still have a flair for the melodramatic that usually comes out in my writing. For example, I started this post with some ideas about the loop of deep self-doubt that occasionally runs through my mind. The initial paragraph read very differently:
I am afraid to see a psychic, for what she may tell me about what she sees in my soul. Will she feel the energy, the darkness that is eating me from within? One look in my eyes, a quick riffling through my internal dialog, and the extent of the rottenness at my core will be clear. She’ll have to make something up, be polite, get me out of there.
This is grown-up melodrama. Like my grief for Happy, when these feelings hit, they are genuine. I acknowledge that there are times when I feel rotten and hollow. This doesn’t mean I am rotten and hollow – my feelings are not objective reality, but to deny them and their origins would be denying part of myself, part of my internal life.
I fight these moments of darkness. But I am convinced they are part of being human and will never fully go away. We don’t want to acknowledge feelings of deep inadequacy, so most of us go around trying to pep-talk ourselves into feeling better. We don’t want to face the beast within.
The good in us, the light, is powerful. It can lift us above the void. But if you feel pangs of self-doubt, why not acknowledge the reality of the feeling, trace it as far back as you can, and move on? Don’t underestimate your ability to confront the beast.
The darkness within doesn’t define us. We are far more complex than that.
For readers who are now thinking of the Nick Lowe song, here it is, as sung live by Johnny Cash, a man whose life was defined in some part by his attempts to push through the darkness. Next post: blog of the month.
|
I slip into the night
The Little House is
nothing fancy. My grandfather and uncle built it in
the early 1970s, two rooms slapped up over a concrete
slab. A suburban shack with aluminum siding and a
roof of grey shingles on tarpaper, it has no heat,
plumbing or telephone line. Inside, the chemical tang
of cheap paneling and indoor/outdoor carpeting
competes with the earthy funk of mildew. Spores
thrive beneath the floor squares, bloom underneath
the pattern of brown and gold fleur-de-lys, while
black colonies spread on the dark side of the faux
wood walls, invisible hordes that constrict my lung
passages. I always keep an inhaler nearby.
My first memory of the house is from the summer of 1972. I am three, walking the 20 feet from the cottage to my grandparent’s place, planting my sturdy feet in thick grass and clover. I take off in a run when the ball of my right foot meets something small and sharp. It burns. I begin to cry. Someone – my aunt? my grandmother? – whisks me into the main house, probes tender flesh with pointed tweezers to remove the bee’s stinger. Afterwards, I lie on the family room sofa in cool air conditioning, injured foot propped on a pillow, a thick paste of soothing baking soda drawing out the pain. I watch cartoons, sucking on a straw to get at the last of Coca-Cola over ice.
That was over thirteen years ago. My grandmother has been dead since 1979 and the Little House is now my home. I spend my days waiting for darkness to fall. Bring on the night, I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight.
Inside the main house at 9:30 p.m. sharp, my grandfather takes out his hearing aids and removes his prosthetic foot, trapping himself in bed for another night of muffled sleep. Four houses down the street my mother, blinded by man and money troubles, sleeps in a cocoon of sadness. My father is sixty miles away, a prisoner of debilitating depression; his kindly wife is totally focused on his well-being. Unheard, unseen, and seemingly unimportant, I slip into the night or let the night slip into me.
My first memory of the house is from the summer of 1972. I am three, walking the 20 feet from the cottage to my grandparent’s place, planting my sturdy feet in thick grass and clover. I take off in a run when the ball of my right foot meets something small and sharp. It burns. I begin to cry. Someone – my aunt? my grandmother? – whisks me into the main house, probes tender flesh with pointed tweezers to remove the bee’s stinger. Afterwards, I lie on the family room sofa in cool air conditioning, injured foot propped on a pillow, a thick paste of soothing baking soda drawing out the pain. I watch cartoons, sucking on a straw to get at the last of Coca-Cola over ice.
That was over thirteen years ago. My grandmother has been dead since 1979 and the Little House is now my home. I spend my days waiting for darkness to fall. Bring on the night, I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight.
Inside the main house at 9:30 p.m. sharp, my grandfather takes out his hearing aids and removes his prosthetic foot, trapping himself in bed for another night of muffled sleep. Four houses down the street my mother, blinded by man and money troubles, sleeps in a cocoon of sadness. My father is sixty miles away, a prisoner of debilitating depression; his kindly wife is totally focused on his well-being. Unheard, unseen, and seemingly unimportant, I slip into the night or let the night slip into me.
This is where my power of
description seizes up.
Really, I’m on the road to forgiveness, and I don’t
want to rehash the past in angry diatribes here.
But – the inevitable but – I am in the midst of the
never-ending stillbirth story, attempting to write
about my time in the Little House, a companion piece
to my biological grandmother’s experiences and as I
try to get my mind around it I find myself asking:
WHAT IN THE HELL WERE MY PARENTS THINKING?
When reality broke through, when my pregnancy became
apparent and ended a month later in a stillbirth, in
dramatic labor occurring in the Little House, when it
became clear that I needed parenting, WHY DID NOTHING
CHANGE?
These are not new thoughts, but the underlying
feelings have changed. My anger before was mainly
self-directed, anger at my family turned inward: what
evil in me brought on their rejection? But now I am
reaching a different conclusion: my mother and father
had so little respect for themselves, for their power
as parents, that they gave up, figured I was fine on
my own, or maybe even assumed that they would only
make things worse. My mother stopped parenting; my
father never even started. They deserve my
compassion. It's no use getting angry at those who
don't see their own worth.
Now I have to work through the feelings, unpack the
meaning of the Little House, dense with suppressed
emotion, so much a part of who I am. I’ve left it
almost completely out of most other versions of the
stillbirth story because it feels like an emotional
bomb. As I try to get back into that time of
isolation, loneliness, self-hatred and anger, my
self-protection (or something) kicks in.
It is time to control the explosion through language,
to capture the shards of the experience on the page.
I'm scared. But if I don't go back, the experience
controls me.
Jailbreak
November 29, 2004 began
the final weeks of my last hurrah.
It was the end of an incredible, challenging half-year. I’d spent June through October in New York, studying culinary arts at the Natural Gourmet Institute, living in a studio sublet in Chelsea. By day I’d take notes on “health supportive” food and create vegetarian gourmet fare with my fellow classmates. Evenings were for wandering Manhattan. The Hudson River was a few blocks away from my apartment, and the West Village was an easy, entertaining stroll. Sometimes I’d go the distance to Midtown where the streets were hopping with humanity and the buildings were a mix of architecture spanning three centuries, old brick storefronts intermingling with structures of concrete and glass.
The streets of Manhattan were overwhelming to me: too much stimulation, every block packed with shops and restaurants, with signs and graffiti (“Mama Loves Neckface”?), every address crying out for attention. Night subdued the signs, softened the calls. So I walked and watched, sometimes talked on the phone with my husband, who was back in DC. We’d go over the days humiliations and occasional triumphs. A few late nights in Brooklyn with my friend Jennifer – drinking, talking, attempting karaoke (never, never again) -- sealed the New York experience.
I went back to DC for six weeks before my internship at Greens Restaurant and spent the time preparing to start a personal chef business. During this break I appeared on a local television news program cooking contest, which led to a later on-air meeting with Anthony Bourdain. My world was opening up into something completely new. It was shiny and scary, anxiety-producing and freeing, a chance to create a business and change my life.
So. November 29, 2004. I was in my favorite city, San Francisco, about to work at Greens, my favorite restaurant. But something was distracting me from restaurant job panic. The day I started my internship, I also had to track down a drugstore. No matter how many tests I tried, the results were always the same. I was pregnant.
One new world slipped away as another one appeared. This was an alien planet created with an equal mix of worry, sacrifice and love. What would it be like to have a little creature totally dependent upon me? Was I up for the task? Was the pain I carried around hereditary, something involuntarily slipped in through the genes, a burden to be shared? I was terrified.
The 80-hour internship went by in a blur. I was a solitary, preoccupied figure, standing in place at the salad and dessert station as other employees, efficient in their clogs and hats, sharpened knives prepared for work, zipped around me. I would look at my slow, inexperienced hands as they grasped the serving spoon and tipped that night’s curry onto a plate. I methodically patted out tart dough as dinners were plated around me, carefully removed the skin and pith from scores of oranges in a haze of prep staff conversation, inexpertly mixed the ingredients for the filo pastry of the day in the cold of the isolated back kitchen.
It wasn’t enough time to even get my feet wet. My inexperience would never get the opportunity to disappear. I was going to be permanently interrupted.
But was I?
Since my son was born, I’ve been living as though all that was ever going to happen to me already had. I’ve let the experience of being a mother stop me from participating in the larger world. The stories I write here are about the past, about the life I had when I had a life outside of my house.
On the other hand, by writing these stories I am reentering the world, slowly emerging from my own head. And I find that my dreams have changed. That shiny new world of four years ago is no longer relevant.
I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
It was the end of an incredible, challenging half-year. I’d spent June through October in New York, studying culinary arts at the Natural Gourmet Institute, living in a studio sublet in Chelsea. By day I’d take notes on “health supportive” food and create vegetarian gourmet fare with my fellow classmates. Evenings were for wandering Manhattan. The Hudson River was a few blocks away from my apartment, and the West Village was an easy, entertaining stroll. Sometimes I’d go the distance to Midtown where the streets were hopping with humanity and the buildings were a mix of architecture spanning three centuries, old brick storefronts intermingling with structures of concrete and glass.
The streets of Manhattan were overwhelming to me: too much stimulation, every block packed with shops and restaurants, with signs and graffiti (“Mama Loves Neckface”?), every address crying out for attention. Night subdued the signs, softened the calls. So I walked and watched, sometimes talked on the phone with my husband, who was back in DC. We’d go over the days humiliations and occasional triumphs. A few late nights in Brooklyn with my friend Jennifer – drinking, talking, attempting karaoke (never, never again) -- sealed the New York experience.
I went back to DC for six weeks before my internship at Greens Restaurant and spent the time preparing to start a personal chef business. During this break I appeared on a local television news program cooking contest, which led to a later on-air meeting with Anthony Bourdain. My world was opening up into something completely new. It was shiny and scary, anxiety-producing and freeing, a chance to create a business and change my life.
So. November 29, 2004. I was in my favorite city, San Francisco, about to work at Greens, my favorite restaurant. But something was distracting me from restaurant job panic. The day I started my internship, I also had to track down a drugstore. No matter how many tests I tried, the results were always the same. I was pregnant.
One new world slipped away as another one appeared. This was an alien planet created with an equal mix of worry, sacrifice and love. What would it be like to have a little creature totally dependent upon me? Was I up for the task? Was the pain I carried around hereditary, something involuntarily slipped in through the genes, a burden to be shared? I was terrified.
The 80-hour internship went by in a blur. I was a solitary, preoccupied figure, standing in place at the salad and dessert station as other employees, efficient in their clogs and hats, sharpened knives prepared for work, zipped around me. I would look at my slow, inexperienced hands as they grasped the serving spoon and tipped that night’s curry onto a plate. I methodically patted out tart dough as dinners were plated around me, carefully removed the skin and pith from scores of oranges in a haze of prep staff conversation, inexpertly mixed the ingredients for the filo pastry of the day in the cold of the isolated back kitchen.
It wasn’t enough time to even get my feet wet. My inexperience would never get the opportunity to disappear. I was going to be permanently interrupted.
But was I?
Since my son was born, I’ve been living as though all that was ever going to happen to me already had. I’ve let the experience of being a mother stop me from participating in the larger world. The stories I write here are about the past, about the life I had when I had a life outside of my house.
On the other hand, by writing these stories I am reentering the world, slowly emerging from my own head. And I find that my dreams have changed. That shiny new world of four years ago is no longer relevant.
I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
From the inside
Mary of
Do You Digg It
recently posted
a review of my blog. It’s a positive
review, though reading it unsettled me a bit.
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
The dammed
Skipped my Sunday
morning run. I’ve been snapping at my family. My mood
is foul and it’s best to stay away from me (thank
you, H, for taking C to the birthday party). I’m
trying to stop my snarls, but my emotions are
simmering, close to the boil.
And I’ve been trying to figure it out: why?
I am filled with untapped ideas and complex emotions. They are waiting in my mind, rapping at the walls of my skull, tugging at my brain: Give us life! Make us real! They are desperate for description, for a life on the page.
But I don’t have the language. The words aren’t coming. My subconscious is hog-tied.
If I knew the why of it all, then maybe I could fix it. So I try to feel whatever it is that I’m feeling, try not to beat myself up with what I should be doing or how I should be spending my precious moments of free time. What is the emotional component to this word clog? Which key will open the box?
One clue: I’ve been struggling with the never-ending stillbirth story. What felt complete looks like it will need a rethink, mainly based on the suggestions of a couple of shrewd readers. Their comments weren’t critical, but instead showed other paths I could take, the way it could expand even within its strict confines of time and place.
Aha. The key. My subconscious isn’t hog-tied. It’s working.
I was sixteen and living in an unheated two-room summer cottage adjacent to my grandfather's house when I became pregnant. We called the cottage the "Little House," or the "Upper Room," names taken from a children's story and the bible, symbols before the fact, names repeated in an irony-free world. This was where I lost my virginity, where I got pregnant, and where I later gave birth to a preterm baby who never took a breath.
My life in the Little House was free from supervision. It was full of lies and neglect, tears and isolation. The events leading up to and directly after the stillbirth, combined with other emotional scars from childhood, have defined how I feel about myself, have colored my interactions. I know how to keep a safe distance.
As I keep on writing that particular story, it changes. Not the facts, but the feelings. I find other ways of telling, understand how the experience that separated me can also connect. The distance falls away, I uncross my arms, open my heart and mind.
I sometimes, however, ignore the darker emotions of neglect and anger associated with that event, wash them away in a wave of sympathy for my under-equipped parents. I don't know how to feel the feelings, to give them voice, without directing blame. Is it possible to forgive but still be angry? My writing turns into a mincing dance around the unspeakable.
The story is worth the work. But I also want it out of my head, done.
The feelings need time. They will out.
And I’ve been trying to figure it out: why?
I am filled with untapped ideas and complex emotions. They are waiting in my mind, rapping at the walls of my skull, tugging at my brain: Give us life! Make us real! They are desperate for description, for a life on the page.
But I don’t have the language. The words aren’t coming. My subconscious is hog-tied.
If I knew the why of it all, then maybe I could fix it. So I try to feel whatever it is that I’m feeling, try not to beat myself up with what I should be doing or how I should be spending my precious moments of free time. What is the emotional component to this word clog? Which key will open the box?
One clue: I’ve been struggling with the never-ending stillbirth story. What felt complete looks like it will need a rethink, mainly based on the suggestions of a couple of shrewd readers. Their comments weren’t critical, but instead showed other paths I could take, the way it could expand even within its strict confines of time and place.
Aha. The key. My subconscious isn’t hog-tied. It’s working.
I was sixteen and living in an unheated two-room summer cottage adjacent to my grandfather's house when I became pregnant. We called the cottage the "Little House," or the "Upper Room," names taken from a children's story and the bible, symbols before the fact, names repeated in an irony-free world. This was where I lost my virginity, where I got pregnant, and where I later gave birth to a preterm baby who never took a breath.
My life in the Little House was free from supervision. It was full of lies and neglect, tears and isolation. The events leading up to and directly after the stillbirth, combined with other emotional scars from childhood, have defined how I feel about myself, have colored my interactions. I know how to keep a safe distance.
As I keep on writing that particular story, it changes. Not the facts, but the feelings. I find other ways of telling, understand how the experience that separated me can also connect. The distance falls away, I uncross my arms, open my heart and mind.
I sometimes, however, ignore the darker emotions of neglect and anger associated with that event, wash them away in a wave of sympathy for my under-equipped parents. I don't know how to feel the feelings, to give them voice, without directing blame. Is it possible to forgive but still be angry? My writing turns into a mincing dance around the unspeakable.
The story is worth the work. But I also want it out of my head, done.
The feelings need time. They will out.
The harvest
06 August 2008 12:11 PM Categories: The struggle
Still August night. I’m
sitting on the hood of his car, clinging to the edge
of the broad expanse of white-coated metal, watching
him walk to me. I can’t see his eyes in the dim light
of the street lamp. His expression is obscure as he
lifts my chin.
Now we’re clutched close, lost in a kiss, tender lip to darting tongue. His calloused carpenter’s hands stroke my hair, wrap me tighter. I think over and over: “This is what is happening right now, this is what is happening right now.”
Then, a fast drive through shuddering cornfields, car windows open, my hair whipping around in a pre-knot frenzy. The stalks are taller than I am, still green, with the threat of decay around the edges.
One morning, the fields will be brown. The next week, empty.
I won’t be seventeen forever.
Now we’re clutched close, lost in a kiss, tender lip to darting tongue. His calloused carpenter’s hands stroke my hair, wrap me tighter. I think over and over: “This is what is happening right now, this is what is happening right now.”
Then, a fast drive through shuddering cornfields, car windows open, my hair whipping around in a pre-knot frenzy. The stalks are taller than I am, still green, with the threat of decay around the edges.
One morning, the fields will be brown. The next week, empty.
I won’t be seventeen forever.
A talisman against loss
30 July 2008 02:02 PM Categories: The struggle
| The kid
Sickness descended on
my household last week. The kid was the first to
fall, and I was next in line. So far, H has escaped
the sinus headaches, the post-nasal drip, and the
world-weary sense of fatigue.
Some children sleep though high fevers, resting up as their bodies fight off the germs. Not our little one. The heat disturbs his sleep. For several nights he woke up in the 2 - 3 a.m. time slot, asking "Is it wake-up time?" Well, no, but we didn't have much say in the matter. Time for a drink of water, maybe for another dose of Motrin, and then we'd settle in for cuddling and long attempts at getting back to sleep. Two hours later, once he was out, I would be able to sleep myself.
The combination of being sick and not getting enough sleep put me in a strange frame of mind. Everything seemed fraught with premature nostalgia. The Duplo block set he got for his birthday, with a castle and the toy knights? A relic of a childhood soon to be over, the toys destined to languish in an attic. The recent photographs of our growing boy? Documentation of a time we won't be be able to remember a year from now. My cuddly 3-year-old will change into a different person, perhaps several times over, and each stage will be as fuzzy in my mind as his first weeks of life. It cut, this realization of the slipperiness of time and memory.
Along with an ache for what has not yet passed, I started to see danger in almost every moment, as though I was preparing myself for an inevitable loss. The bee I saw crawling on our grass -- would it deliver a fatal sting to my son, sink its poison into his chubby bare foot? (Never mind that we have no idea if he is allergic. It is a genetic possiblity). Would this be the dog walk where I would lose my balance and fall backwards, landing on my son, strapped to my back in an Ergo carrier? (Oh, for those days when he insisted on wearing his bike helmet at all times!)
And what about me? Was I paying enough attention to the dangers that I faced? Is the morning coming when, groggy and uncaffeinated, I will accidentally dip my low-hanging robe sleeve into the burner flame, stare in shock as the sleeve is consumed? Would I finally miss that step and go tumbling into a crumpled heap of bone and flesh on the floor below?
Maybe if I tried to keep the dangers in mind, tried to remind myself that what we love can be taken away, that no moment is innocent, I would have a mental talisman against loss.
That was a few days ago. Sleep is improving and my outlook is returning to normal. Neurotic worrying is not what protects us from danger. I am lucky to live in an incredibly safe part of the world, with access to clean water, plentiful food, and good medical care. I don't have to dodge bombs or gunfire. I don't need a talisman.
But I am going to watch my step when I go down the stairs.
Some children sleep though high fevers, resting up as their bodies fight off the germs. Not our little one. The heat disturbs his sleep. For several nights he woke up in the 2 - 3 a.m. time slot, asking "Is it wake-up time?" Well, no, but we didn't have much say in the matter. Time for a drink of water, maybe for another dose of Motrin, and then we'd settle in for cuddling and long attempts at getting back to sleep. Two hours later, once he was out, I would be able to sleep myself.
The combination of being sick and not getting enough sleep put me in a strange frame of mind. Everything seemed fraught with premature nostalgia. The Duplo block set he got for his birthday, with a castle and the toy knights? A relic of a childhood soon to be over, the toys destined to languish in an attic. The recent photographs of our growing boy? Documentation of a time we won't be be able to remember a year from now. My cuddly 3-year-old will change into a different person, perhaps several times over, and each stage will be as fuzzy in my mind as his first weeks of life. It cut, this realization of the slipperiness of time and memory.
Along with an ache for what has not yet passed, I started to see danger in almost every moment, as though I was preparing myself for an inevitable loss. The bee I saw crawling on our grass -- would it deliver a fatal sting to my son, sink its poison into his chubby bare foot? (Never mind that we have no idea if he is allergic. It is a genetic possiblity). Would this be the dog walk where I would lose my balance and fall backwards, landing on my son, strapped to my back in an Ergo carrier? (Oh, for those days when he insisted on wearing his bike helmet at all times!)
And what about me? Was I paying enough attention to the dangers that I faced? Is the morning coming when, groggy and uncaffeinated, I will accidentally dip my low-hanging robe sleeve into the burner flame, stare in shock as the sleeve is consumed? Would I finally miss that step and go tumbling into a crumpled heap of bone and flesh on the floor below?
Maybe if I tried to keep the dangers in mind, tried to remind myself that what we love can be taken away, that no moment is innocent, I would have a mental talisman against loss.
That was a few days ago. Sleep is improving and my outlook is returning to normal. Neurotic worrying is not what protects us from danger. I am lucky to live in an incredibly safe part of the world, with access to clean water, plentiful food, and good medical care. I don't have to dodge bombs or gunfire. I don't need a talisman.
But I am going to watch my step when I go down the stairs.
So. What would I write if ...
25 July 2008 07:41 PM Categories: The struggle
| Marriage
no one read this blog.
If I was still Anonmomous?
This has been a hard week of slog and attempts to think my way through a muddled, sad brain.
There could be at least one reason I am struggling -- the end of July marks an anniversary of sorts (some might call it an antiversary). This, coupled with an overnight work retreat for my husband next week, a true triggering event, is bringing me down. These dates will lose their meaning over time, but the first go-round stinks.
So. Maybe that's it.
(Ever since my mother sent me this quote from Seamus Heaney on the use of 'So.' as prelude, a call for attention, I've been using it as a sentence all on its own. The quote is below, Famous Seamus on translating Beowulf and using the term 'So.'
There you have it -- a little esoterica to balance out the angst, to confuse the crowd. Oh, for courage and greatness.)
"And when I came to ask myself how I wanted Beowulf to sound in my version, I realized I wanted it to be speakable by one of [my big-voiced Scullion] relatives, [who had a kind of Native American solemnity of utterance, as if they were announcing verdicts rather than making small talk. ] I therefore tried to frame the famous opening lines in cadences that would have suited their voices, but that still echoed with the sound and sense of the Anglo-Saxon:
Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
peod-cyninga prym gefrunon,
Conventional renderings of "hwaet," the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and "behold" and "attend" and—more colloquially—"listen" being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came naturally to the rescue because in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, "so" it was:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness."
This has been a hard week of slog and attempts to think my way through a muddled, sad brain.
There could be at least one reason I am struggling -- the end of July marks an anniversary of sorts (some might call it an antiversary). This, coupled with an overnight work retreat for my husband next week, a true triggering event, is bringing me down. These dates will lose their meaning over time, but the first go-round stinks.
So. Maybe that's it.
(Ever since my mother sent me this quote from Seamus Heaney on the use of 'So.' as prelude, a call for attention, I've been using it as a sentence all on its own. The quote is below, Famous Seamus on translating Beowulf and using the term 'So.'
There you have it -- a little esoterica to balance out the angst, to confuse the crowd. Oh, for courage and greatness.)
"And when I came to ask myself how I wanted Beowulf to sound in my version, I realized I wanted it to be speakable by one of [my big-voiced Scullion] relatives, [who had a kind of Native American solemnity of utterance, as if they were announcing verdicts rather than making small talk. ] I therefore tried to frame the famous opening lines in cadences that would have suited their voices, but that still echoed with the sound and sense of the Anglo-Saxon:
Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
peod-cyninga prym gefrunon,
Conventional renderings of "hwaet," the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and "behold" and "attend" and—more colloquially—"listen" being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came naturally to the rescue because in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, "so" it was:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness."
Crushed
04 July 2008 10:15 PM Categories: Quotidian
existence | Marriage
I didn’t dream about
him for months.
For a long time I thought the dreams were messages from my subconscious, a sign of our untapped connection. But they were always full of anxiety, missed moments, twisting city streets, long distances traveled for dissatisfying conversations. The longing was mine alone.
In one dream, my mind created a labyrinthine mental institution for our encounters. We were both inmates, living in separate dormitories. The buildings were part of a Victorian-era hospital, dark and complex with hidden meanings, completely separate from the external world. We would meet and part, meet and part, sometimes with a glance, sometimes managing a quick kiss, always with that awful ache for what could never be. I woke up wondering: Do you care for me? Do I exist for you?
That was the hold he had on me: the pursuit of acknowledgment, the desire to be seen for who I was, while he existed as pure symbol, out of reach and impossible to know.
Last fall, when my marriage was going through a rough patch, we started e-mailing more frequently. I liked the exchange, felt my latent crush expand, fill the spaces I thought were empty. It was innocent fun – no lines were crossed. Then, without explanation, he stopped responding.
Over time the dreams went on hiatus. Until last night. I’m not going to get sucked into this game with my subconscious again.
I don’t need his acknowledgement to know I exist.
For a long time I thought the dreams were messages from my subconscious, a sign of our untapped connection. But they were always full of anxiety, missed moments, twisting city streets, long distances traveled for dissatisfying conversations. The longing was mine alone.
In one dream, my mind created a labyrinthine mental institution for our encounters. We were both inmates, living in separate dormitories. The buildings were part of a Victorian-era hospital, dark and complex with hidden meanings, completely separate from the external world. We would meet and part, meet and part, sometimes with a glance, sometimes managing a quick kiss, always with that awful ache for what could never be. I woke up wondering: Do you care for me? Do I exist for you?
That was the hold he had on me: the pursuit of acknowledgment, the desire to be seen for who I was, while he existed as pure symbol, out of reach and impossible to know.
Last fall, when my marriage was going through a rough patch, we started e-mailing more frequently. I liked the exchange, felt my latent crush expand, fill the spaces I thought were empty. It was innocent fun – no lines were crossed. Then, without explanation, he stopped responding.
Over time the dreams went on hiatus. Until last night. I’m not going to get sucked into this game with my subconscious again.
I don’t need his acknowledgement to know I exist.
Existential angst, Part 2
25 February 2008 04:29 PM Categories: The struggle
I had some doubts about
whether I should post this -- nothing about writing
here, nothing positive and chirrupy either.
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.
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.