It’s been a quiet end of winter/beginning of spring season. The warmth, the sun, the first sight of crocuses, have not left my heart giddy and untethered, anxious for more, and joyful being able to walk a block in a tee-shirt and jeans.
With everything going on, my mood has been both somber and blessed. I have less to say than usual, I’m busy trying to make sense of the world and the people making noise in the world. I’m taking note of everything I have to be grateful for; it seems more important these days to appreciate everything I have to be grateful for.
The dogs make me laugh. Chanel is already upstairs waiting for me to join her in bed. Jack just brought me a moccasin he found in the back yard that looks more like part of a eviscerated rabbit than a shoe. Bernadette shimmies her butt every time I walk in the door, but only some of the time. I need to figure out what inspires her. Maybe she knows something we don’t.
There are the crocuses, the brave flowers of early spring. Ours are purple, and they are hidden behind a bush.
I’m not sure what to say to friends; we commiserate, we talk about our kids, how much sleep we’ve been sleeping, what we do when we can’t, a cold front, the temperature for the weekend and make gentle or barbed comments about the people in our lives. Whose husband stopped shaving. What seventeen year old only calls his mom “bro”. Which parent doesn’t want to move to assisted living but can’t remember to turn off the flame on the stove.
We promise to make time for a meal or a follow up call. There are pauses, long drawn out sighs, and things that aren’t really spoken about unless that can of worms opens, in which case we stay on the phone until we find an excuse to hang up.
There is food to be tended or a dog to be walked. Clothes to be thrown in the wash.
Yes, I am somber. But with all this gravity, there is also the weight and the luxury of blessings.
The obvious ones and the tiny graces like clean sheets, the upcoming Easter celebration at a friend’s, a call from Katy that I wasn’t expecting, coming across a poem I wrote a long time ago inside a paperback novel that I can’t decipher at all so it must be brilliant. There is the sliding my toes inside the sneakers that make me want to skip, the occasional amazing hair day, and the unexpected voice of Joe Cocker blaring out of my radio station, from a million years ago, asking if I’m feeling allright.
No, I’m not feelin’ too good myself.
But maybe I am.
I am somber and blessed, and brave, like a crocus. It’s early spring. Maybe giddy will come along, soon, for a while anyway.
I just need to make space.
Small Moments
November 27, 2022
It is the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
It just started to rain and I’m wondering where to begin.
Our family feels different than the others I know in our town; no family members live anywhere nearby, that we speak to often, anyway. Our unit is my husband, my 22 year old son, whose been on house arrest since last October, (weed, my friends, just too much damn weed in a closet,) me, who works at a local college helping students navigate financial aid, and my daughter, 19 years old, in her first year of college in Amherst, Massachusetts, two hours from home.
I just noticed I didn’t say much about my husband; for work, he is content to drive people to the airport, walk dogs, and detail cars, he’s been a member of the gig economy before that was a thing. While I’m at work, I send him recipes almost every day in hopes that he’ll figure out he should start cooking dinner each night. Often, he’ll go to the store for the ingredients, and half the time they go bad before one of us tackles whatever dish I’d discovered on the NY Times cooking app.
When we are in the same house, an observer might think we were boarders who had been sharing the same space for a while. Colin will text Kate, her room is across the hall, his door maybe 18 inches from his door, to ask her to go downtown and pick up his dinner or to Hanover to buy a dozen over priced cookies the size of tea plates. When she said goodbye to him on her way back to school, she tossed the words over her shoulder, at my prompting, as she walked out the door. I don’t think he heard her, I think he believed she’d left hours ago. She is quiet, behind her door.
My husband watches tv in bed downstairs at night, I watch shows on my phone from the sofa in the living room.
We’ve drifted; we weren’t always this way. Christmas will be awkward; all of us standing around in the same room. Probably I’m the only one who will see it as awkward. Or maybe, Colin will be off house arrest and we’ll share dinner in the city at a noisy restaurant and things will feel normal again.
God, my life sounds grim, our life sounds grim. It’s not. My husband and I have friends, we go out to dinner. Katy loves school and invited me to have a glass of wine with her when she had friends over this weekend. Colin bought a puppy last November, and we spend a lot of time sitting around on the run in the living room, watching Chanel wriggle and roll, chase a toy or a bottle of plastic, try to hump my left leg. Actually when she does that, Colin gets disgusted and goes back upstairs. (I wonder why she finds my left leg more appealing than the right.)
Usually, the Sunday night after a holiday weekend, I’m overwhelmed by what I didn’t do and what I need to do. It’s only 5:43 pm, and all that’s left on my list is to find a clean pair of pants and pick out some shoes for tomorrow.
Tonight, things seem lovely, not even a little bit grim.
Katy asked me to get matching tatoos. I am not sure I want to get matching tatoos, or any tatoo, but if I am going to have inkspots carved into my skin, it will be because Katy asked. I was surprised; I know we’re close, but lately I’ve been feeling like she regards me as just-a-mum, who needs to tolerated and offered the ocassional compliment or cookie.
Sheldon and I cooked a Thanksgiving meal to share with our son and his friend, since Colin couldn’t join us on Thursday when we went to Salem to see Shel’s sister. We didn’t fight about dishes. We didn’t squabble about celery in the stuffing, (I gave in, I put celery in the damned stuffing, and to be honest, couldn’t tell the difference). I didn’t snap when he left the table early to watch football, or when Colin neglected to put his dish in the sink.
Sheldon always leaves the table early for football, and Colin gets his dish to the sink about twice a week. I do not know why, once or twice, this has made me so mad, I’ve broken a bowl or glass by angrily flinging them into the dishwasher. Take that, cup!
I turned up the radio and sorted out the kitchen cabinets that store the tupperwae, the chinese food takeout containers, the old yogurt cups. I threw out the things without tops, I threw out the tops without things. I rearranged our bowls, I scoured our cookie sheets that were, to be honest, disgusting. I almost snapped a photo for Instagram but images of stacked plasticware are not what I want to see when I’m scrolling.
When I went upstairs, after dinner, Colin invited me into his room. “Check this out!” On his big screen tv, we watched some divers almost get eaten by a cluster of five huge whales, feeding on sardines by leaping into the air, jaws open wide, and scooping massive mouthfuls of water, fish, and seaweed, then gulping the whole mouthful down. The narrator pointed out it was luck that one of the divers wasn’t part the dinner; someone could have easily been caught up in the maelstrom. I’m going to keep an eye out for shows like that; explorers or hunters having near death experiences, with lions or sharks or the really big bears that have been on the news so much. Colin and I used to watch television together all the time- we loved “How I Met My Mother” and when he was older, it was all “Law and Order”. Maybe we can be brought together by violent nature shows that remind us we are lucky to be alive in front of huge flat screen tv. I’ll try anything that isn’t illegal or involve staying up after ten pm to connect with my first born, Collie.
Maybe my family feels odd, or maybe everybody’s family feels odd, from the inside.
Tonight, I am a little bit closer to mine. I am insanely proud of my cabinet, the stacks of leftovers in the fridge, my lunch already tucked away in a bag where I’lll find it. It’s been a good day, and a lovely weekend.
I am thankful that I have more time with the people I love, more than anything, and more time to figure out how to get things right.
Day Forty-Two- I Make a Promise I Don’t Keep.
May 2, 2020
For a little over a month, I’ve been doing daily posts about life under quarantine. My intention was to keep a record of how my family dealt with this weird, hard, situation.
I’m going to keep posting, but I won’t title my posts with the number of days we’ve been home.
Each day going forward is not a number, or a marker of time until this is over.
Each day is a challenge, a nightmare, a blessing, and an opportunity to figure out who I am, how to leave the world a better place, what I can do to help those I love navigate through a world for which a map does not exist.
This was not the best of days. I didn’t get a full hour of exercise so I’m surly. I took a nap in the afternoon, ate too much of Katy’s lovely lemon bars, recipe gifted from my mom, told my son to pack his stuff and move out because he didn’t put a dish in the dishwasher, and got lost in a tiny patch of woods off of Rte 138.
I also had a zoom call with my family, apologized like I meant it, and, when I click post, am going to take a dance cardio class in the living room, bluetooth speaker connected, which will probably irritate the hell out of everyone.
I know jumping around on the carpet won’t leave the world a better place, and irritating the people I just apologized to is kind of hypocritical, but, this what me taking care of myself looks like.
Take care of yourself.
Love,
julie
Day 14- Today we made toast
March 30, 2020
December 14th, 10:54, Silent, Sweet, Sad, Sad Night
December 15, 2012
Tonight, the world doesn’t make much sense to me.
Our corner of the world has a Christmas tree with a crooked angel that opens and closes her arms, not enough lights and tinsel that seems to end up on the floor. Two kids are upstairs sleeping. Sophie the Wondrous and the Magical Dog is staring out the window, waiting for the return of Michael, the Delightful, Disappearing Cat. The dishwasher hums, the radiators rattle, the keyboard clicks.
My world makes sense tonight if I fill my mind with the noises here, right around me. For this, I know I am supremely blessed.
I want to offer prayers, that doesn’t seem to be enough. Hugs, oh my God, hugs? I want to fold the whole wide world inside my arms and have it all make sense and wake up tomorrow to a place where it all does. Make sense.
So tonight, I will pray. Tonight, many, many of us will pray, though some may call it something else.
Tomorrow we will wake up and watch the news, have difficult conversations with our children, shop, wrap, grieve.
And tomorrow night, we will pray again.
Until the night we forget because we are tired, or tipsy, or lost.
Or until the night, the prayers are heard.
We’ll see.
Tonight, the world doesn’t make much sense to me.
julierichmond 