I often think of little things to write about. A thread here or there that wraps up a moment. My intention is to scribble a note to myself to remember the gist of it, whatever it is I’m in, so when I have a moment, I can sit down and unwind a little narrative. One of the final scenes in Goodfellas has become a metaphor for my life. Ray Liotta is strung out big time. He’s about to get caught. He’s juggling drug trafficking, family, a mistress, and dinner. He narrates the back and forth of picking up the babysitter, her lucky hat, asking his brother to watch the meat sauce and keep an eye out for helicopters. Amidst the unraveling, he says he has to make the meatballs. The meatballs are important. You need to get the gravy right.
As we run around like crazy people, sometimes we’ll just stop. And look at each other, exhausted.
“I need to make the meatballs.”
It has been a year of loss and often awakening; the constant cocoon and emergence with different wings. The cycle of change is so repeated, so much that you just want a break from all the different all the time. You want things to say the same or not even that but just stop. Cut it out. But the only thing you can count on is that there will be snow, and that is what will make everything look the same.
Change is like a drug. Pick up the babysitter, make the plans, stack them on top of each other, and make the meatballs.
Being the subject of a little girl comes in handy here. Because I look at her,we look at her, and we want it both ways. We want her to grow up, right out of the narrow range of emotional expression and intense focus on repetition and into broader exploration and inquiry. But we want her to stay the same. The girl who tells me she’s not going to cry. The one who grabs my head and kisses me almost passionately on my face and who can watch Cindy Lauper’s Time After Time and say to me, earnestly, when Cindy hugs her mother for the last time on her way to the train station:
“It’s her mother. She’s saying good-bye to her mother.”
The girl who watched a tear fall onto her shirt when her eyes were weepy with sickness and said:
“Whoops.”
I would like to keep that for a while longer.
For the next week, I will have her all to myself. I will sit still in my heart and let it get strong while we spoil each other. I will look at her and try not to let her know quite how desperately I love her, because that’s almost too much to put on a little girl. If that makes sense.
I will forgo the fucking meatballs.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
she didn't want a service, so she threw herself a party
Last weekend, a friend of mine passed away after a long illness. I’ll miss her very much. But please refrain from feeling sad, because I’d like to tell you about some of our time together.
* * *
We were shopping together in Boston, the day before a conference started. When we went to check out, the woman behind the counter asked my friend if she was buying for me. I guess she thought we were related.
“Baby’s paying for herself today,” she said.
* * *
After a day of site visits during which we had gotten lost in our own neighborhood several times, we concluded our exhaustion at her house.
“Do you want a Bloody Mary or a beer?”
“I’ll take a Bloody Mary,” I said.
“Do you want a snit?”
For those of you who might be unaware, a "snit" is the same as a beer back. For those of you who don’t know what a beer back is, that is how we role.
“Yeah.”
She made me the biggest, baddest (bad as in good), best Bloody Mary I have ever had. Complete with all of the wonderful things those drinks bring, like olives, celery, cheese, and salt.
And then she handed me my snit. In the form of an entire bottle of Corona.
"What would you have done if I had asked for a beer?"
"Made you a Bloody."
* * *
When she found out she was not going to recover from her illness, it was very near her birthday. So she threw a giant party for herself. It was a beautiful evening with a couple hundred of her closest friends. Everyone’s name tag had a different plastic flower hot glued to it, or a golf tee. The food and wine were spectacular and abundant. Toward the end of the evening, we all gathering outside so she could tell us how much she loved us, and how grateful she was we were all there.
Someone started to cry.
“No crocodile tears,” she said.
* * *
I visited her a half dozen times during her last three months. Her house was a revolving door of guests and the phone rang off the hook when I was there. I had wanted to go out to dinner with her but it just was not possible. The first time I came, she was getting a hospital bed installed. She teased me about how the guy who was installing it was flirting with me.
“He didn’t say a word until you came in. Perked right up.”
“That’s hilarious.”
* * *
One time, she wanted me to bring her two fish sandwiches from McDonald’s which she ate with a glass of milk. She showed me a card she had bought for her friend who she described as “a big busted woman, but you would never know it to look at her.” And I wondered how she knew. I asked her how she was doing. We talked about how great her party was.
“I only regret not getting to go to Istanbul,” she said. “That would have been fun.”
* * *
A couple weeks before died, I took my first trip to see her with a group of people. We drank Bloody Marys and snits again and talked about sports and tequila. I gave her a kiss and we said we loved each other.
“I have a cold,” she said. “I don’t want to give it to you.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
* * *
The last time I saw her was two days before 7:20 a.m. on February 12. She was sleeping a deep, heavy sleep. We rubbed her hands and told her she was beautiful. And she is.
* * *
Losing people is such a pain in the ass. In so many ways.
It’s probably clear what I learned from Vickie. That relationships matter, that Paul was right; the love you take is equal to the love you make. That specifying the size of your beer back is advisable. All of that stuff everyone is pretty sure they knew already. That death is a part of life. That it’s sad when people go away. That life is for the living, even when you know your time is soon.
That life is for the living.
* * *
We were shopping together in Boston, the day before a conference started. When we went to check out, the woman behind the counter asked my friend if she was buying for me. I guess she thought we were related.
“Baby’s paying for herself today,” she said.
* * *
After a day of site visits during which we had gotten lost in our own neighborhood several times, we concluded our exhaustion at her house.
“Do you want a Bloody Mary or a beer?”
“I’ll take a Bloody Mary,” I said.
“Do you want a snit?”
For those of you who might be unaware, a "snit" is the same as a beer back. For those of you who don’t know what a beer back is, that is how we role.
“Yeah.”
She made me the biggest, baddest (bad as in good), best Bloody Mary I have ever had. Complete with all of the wonderful things those drinks bring, like olives, celery, cheese, and salt.
And then she handed me my snit. In the form of an entire bottle of Corona.
"What would you have done if I had asked for a beer?"
"Made you a Bloody."
* * *
When she found out she was not going to recover from her illness, it was very near her birthday. So she threw a giant party for herself. It was a beautiful evening with a couple hundred of her closest friends. Everyone’s name tag had a different plastic flower hot glued to it, or a golf tee. The food and wine were spectacular and abundant. Toward the end of the evening, we all gathering outside so she could tell us how much she loved us, and how grateful she was we were all there.
Someone started to cry.
“No crocodile tears,” she said.
* * *
I visited her a half dozen times during her last three months. Her house was a revolving door of guests and the phone rang off the hook when I was there. I had wanted to go out to dinner with her but it just was not possible. The first time I came, she was getting a hospital bed installed. She teased me about how the guy who was installing it was flirting with me.
“He didn’t say a word until you came in. Perked right up.”
“That’s hilarious.”
* * *
One time, she wanted me to bring her two fish sandwiches from McDonald’s which she ate with a glass of milk. She showed me a card she had bought for her friend who she described as “a big busted woman, but you would never know it to look at her.” And I wondered how she knew. I asked her how she was doing. We talked about how great her party was.
“I only regret not getting to go to Istanbul,” she said. “That would have been fun.”
* * *
A couple weeks before died, I took my first trip to see her with a group of people. We drank Bloody Marys and snits again and talked about sports and tequila. I gave her a kiss and we said we loved each other.
“I have a cold,” she said. “I don’t want to give it to you.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
* * *
The last time I saw her was two days before 7:20 a.m. on February 12. She was sleeping a deep, heavy sleep. We rubbed her hands and told her she was beautiful. And she is.
* * *
Losing people is such a pain in the ass. In so many ways.
It’s probably clear what I learned from Vickie. That relationships matter, that Paul was right; the love you take is equal to the love you make. That specifying the size of your beer back is advisable. All of that stuff everyone is pretty sure they knew already. That death is a part of life. That it’s sad when people go away. That life is for the living, even when you know your time is soon.
That life is for the living.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
my grandfather was a mailman. true story.
I have what is best described as an annual affair with my mail. We stopped visiting each other regularly three years ago. Now, we check in on each other, not too much so it’s always interesting. It never fails to disappoint. Thin, red packages raising up from all the shit I will have to tear in half to avoid having my identity stolen. The whole lover metaphor probably ended a sentence ago.
I don’t have a great excuse for why this is the way it is. If you know me, you probably could tell me. It probably has something to do with details or time.
I have sent exactly two letters in the last year. Two cards to two family members. And when I dropped them in the post box, I never expected for a moment to hear anything back. I even assumed they wouldn’t make it there. They held some tender matters of my heart. Writing them, I sent them on their way, wherever they land just does not matter. But I put them in a box here and somehow they end up there? That just seems nuts.
My willing mail ignorance has caused some issues.
My insurance got temporarily discontinued last year because I failed to verify that I didn’t have any other insurance. “We sent you a letter.” I discovered the error because in one of my hunt and peck sessions for a specific piece of something else, I found an unpaid bill for $700 for my daughter’s office visit.
I discovered a note from a former acquaintance that had been quietly slipped (not even mailed) onto my porch. She said she didn’t know if we still live here. Or if we wanted to be in touch. But she was interested in reconnecting. I found it four months after it landed. And then I re-lost it for another few months. I recently found it, and it’s sitting in my office near my phone. I’m working up the courage to write her and tell her what happened. Or maybe she’s better off.
I have almost thrown away tickets to Wrigley Field. Concerts. I have lapsed membership in various things. Seasonal discounts. Stuff.
I had occasion this evening to step onto the porch and search in the dark for something required. I mashed around the obvious garbage, looking for the tell-tale signs of legitimate business. And there were…all these other things in there. Notes about comings and goings over the past year. Pictures of children so much bigger even than the last time I saw them. Kind cards from family; fingerprints of time taken to send a note off on a journey, not expecting something in return, but still wanting to share something with us and with others.
We opened our mail this evening with our daughter and told her who all of it was from. And I think tomorrow, we will write our first letter together to someone.
I’m still not going to check it regularly, though.
I don’t have a great excuse for why this is the way it is. If you know me, you probably could tell me. It probably has something to do with details or time.
I have sent exactly two letters in the last year. Two cards to two family members. And when I dropped them in the post box, I never expected for a moment to hear anything back. I even assumed they wouldn’t make it there. They held some tender matters of my heart. Writing them, I sent them on their way, wherever they land just does not matter. But I put them in a box here and somehow they end up there? That just seems nuts.
My willing mail ignorance has caused some issues.
My insurance got temporarily discontinued last year because I failed to verify that I didn’t have any other insurance. “We sent you a letter.” I discovered the error because in one of my hunt and peck sessions for a specific piece of something else, I found an unpaid bill for $700 for my daughter’s office visit.
I discovered a note from a former acquaintance that had been quietly slipped (not even mailed) onto my porch. She said she didn’t know if we still live here. Or if we wanted to be in touch. But she was interested in reconnecting. I found it four months after it landed. And then I re-lost it for another few months. I recently found it, and it’s sitting in my office near my phone. I’m working up the courage to write her and tell her what happened. Or maybe she’s better off.
I have almost thrown away tickets to Wrigley Field. Concerts. I have lapsed membership in various things. Seasonal discounts. Stuff.
I had occasion this evening to step onto the porch and search in the dark for something required. I mashed around the obvious garbage, looking for the tell-tale signs of legitimate business. And there were…all these other things in there. Notes about comings and goings over the past year. Pictures of children so much bigger even than the last time I saw them. Kind cards from family; fingerprints of time taken to send a note off on a journey, not expecting something in return, but still wanting to share something with us and with others.
We opened our mail this evening with our daughter and told her who all of it was from. And I think tomorrow, we will write our first letter together to someone.
I’m still not going to check it regularly, though.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
resolute
It's never too late to wonder what might be. And imagine.
I started new behaviors before the new year. A false running start that comforts me. Exercise, eating habits, and internal promises of tranquility. It's my MO. I have been a Buddhist ten times over. A vegetarian. A regular writer.
Like most sapians, I have a long list of the things I would change. It should be noted here that the changes are not the sign of intense discontent with who I am. No, that's really not it at all. Consider it a heightened awareness of the world and the people in it, and what is all around me that is and are just not . . . me.
Debra Morgan's lips. And her quirky cat eyes.
Curly hair. A halo of fro.
Appropriate silence.
Really white teeth.
Tight triceps.
Boobs.
It.
There is so much to want in the world. More or less of something that you have or don't, and there are so many people that you see at least one person each day who has "it." At least one. And when there's more, that can hurt. Why can't you just do it? Why can't you just change?
Wouldn't it be better if we didn't use contractions?
It isn't the wanting that is so destructive, I don't think. It's when it turns into the belief that the "it" is the one thing that stands between you and happiness. If I could just master that one thing, I would have everything. Sometimes, seeing what you don't have is the only time to take stock in yourself. That's not fair to anyone.
I am resolute, in this new year, to take stock outside times when I notice what I do not have to assess everything I take for granted. My most astoundingly beautiful daughter, inside and out. My exceptional partner in life who I, quite simply, lucked into assbackwards. My ability to change. The ease with which I cry. My hair. Me.
Wanting; it's not so bad.
The having is hard to understand.
This year I will tie both together in each moment they appear. Give them the dance they deserve. By having each partner take a solo run. What I wish I were takes a turn. What I am dances to a longer song.
And--perhaps--it leads.
I started new behaviors before the new year. A false running start that comforts me. Exercise, eating habits, and internal promises of tranquility. It's my MO. I have been a Buddhist ten times over. A vegetarian. A regular writer.
Like most sapians, I have a long list of the things I would change. It should be noted here that the changes are not the sign of intense discontent with who I am. No, that's really not it at all. Consider it a heightened awareness of the world and the people in it, and what is all around me that is and are just not . . . me.
Debra Morgan's lips. And her quirky cat eyes.
Curly hair. A halo of fro.
Appropriate silence.
Really white teeth.
Tight triceps.
Boobs.
It.
There is so much to want in the world. More or less of something that you have or don't, and there are so many people that you see at least one person each day who has "it." At least one. And when there's more, that can hurt. Why can't you just do it? Why can't you just change?
Wouldn't it be better if we didn't use contractions?
It isn't the wanting that is so destructive, I don't think. It's when it turns into the belief that the "it" is the one thing that stands between you and happiness. If I could just master that one thing, I would have everything. Sometimes, seeing what you don't have is the only time to take stock in yourself. That's not fair to anyone.
I am resolute, in this new year, to take stock outside times when I notice what I do not have to assess everything I take for granted. My most astoundingly beautiful daughter, inside and out. My exceptional partner in life who I, quite simply, lucked into assbackwards. My ability to change. The ease with which I cry. My hair. Me.
Wanting; it's not so bad.
The having is hard to understand.
This year I will tie both together in each moment they appear. Give them the dance they deserve. By having each partner take a solo run. What I wish I were takes a turn. What I am dances to a longer song.
And--perhaps--it leads.
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