percussive laundry
It's Monday night... a long day of work and a long evening spent pacing around the kitchen is giving way to an antsy hour on the couch with "The Rachel Zoe Project" on Bravo because anything less vapid would shove my brain into overdrive.
(And because there's something about vintage fashion that gives me a glimmer of hope that somewhere-- beneath the snark and the unkempt hair and the dorky threads-- somewhere under the double braids on top of my head and the Patagonia waffle-print hoodie I hid in all day lies a woman who's normal enough to melt a little bit at the sight of truly beautiful dresses.)
This week has been so crazy. A week ago from yesterday, Tom and I had just settled into the couch with vino and a big bowl of popcorn to watch the season opener of Mad Men when my mom called from her never-used cell phone-- there was a strange calm tone to her voice, and the first thing that she said was that she was in the car because the emergency room cardiologist had said that "he'd live"...
I was so, so sure she was calling to say that my father had suffered from a heart attack that it literally took me about 15-30 seconds after the fact to realize that she had used my uncle's name instead. My uncle had a severe heart attack and-- according to the emergency room staff-- if the ambulance had spent up to one minute more rushing him there, he would no longer be here. It was hard to believe that this had really happened until I saw him two days after his quintuple bypass... pale and a little blue and his face twisting in agony from how uncomfortable he was, lying naked except for a twisted sheet and hugging a heart-shaped pillow in the ICU because even putting his arms at his sides could've caused another attack.
It surprised me that he had a heart attack, and even more surprising somehow that the hospital sent him home today... just because the robin's egg hue of blue I saw in his cheeks was such a sign of robin's egg vulnerability in one of the only family members I have, and I don't like the idea of him being home without the male nurse from New Orleans sitting right outside his room, watching to make sure that the heart monitor reads 'normal' and his breathing is ok.
My uncle and I aren't as close as I wish we were, but we're as close as I could get considering the dynamic of my family. Aside from my parents, I have one uncle and one aunt who I have any relationship with, and they just have three kids between the two of them (who I speak to once or less each year). My uncle is the only person I could call if something went wrong at home and we needed help. He and I didn't have much of a relationship until two years ago when my parents were in Europe and my grandmother had a stroke and was sent to assisted care-- then it was 6 or so weeks of seeing each other almost daily, and it was the first time as I saw him as a son instead of just my cousins' father. Ever since, I've wanted to know him better as a person-- I've wanted him to know me better outside of the "would you like me to tell you a story about when I lived in Brazil" conversation we have once a year over turkey at my parents' 4-person holiday table.
I was so scared when my mom called. I genuinely panicked... just for a second... and when the panic lifted and my mom kept calmly describing the ICU at the hospital, I felt like someone had pulled my rib cage out of my chest. I didn't even know if I could stand up straight. I felt like someone had just said-- "your family just got taken away and you're totally alone... JUST KIDDING! See you tomorrow at work!" The rest of the week was an odd blur. I just felt numb and sleep-deprived and confused.
Seeing my uncle get better day by day has been incredibly important for me. If he's strong enough to heal at the age of 65 with what looks like (literally) a power strip embedded down the center of his sternum... after a quintuple bypass surgery and coming within a minute of losing his life... I certainly need to be strong enough to face my fears about family and isolation and emotional barriers between people I care about. I need to accept my family the way they are and do whatever I can to translate the immense but secret and pretzel-knotted love I feel for them. The past is the past, and although the family doesn't make much effort to connect, I can feel that all 4 of the cousins would if we had a chance. It's awkward, but we all really reach out to each other when we see each other. Maybe this is the event that makes us all work a little harder to be a real family... hair unbrushed, wearing old pajamas, speaking too comfortably to each other over mugs of coffee instead of what we've always done, which is to have predictable, 2-dimensional conversations over wedding cake or funeral home coffee.
In some ways, I think this might be one of my best chances to get what I've been trying hard to find in my family. I'm sad that 40+ years of heavy smoking probably is what we can thank for my uncle almost losing his life, but I'm bolstered by the fact that we're here, and we can actually help him heal because he lives 15 minutes away instead of across the continent, as it sometimes feels. I'm anxious to hug my cousins and reassure them that I'll do anything I can to smack the cigarettes and heavy power tools out of my uncle's hands as he recovers when they go back to their lives in Mexico and DC.
Anyway.
So there was that.
Now my arms are jello, not from panic, but from a long day of aggressive typing and phone number punching-in and stirring garlic into the ground turkey browning in the fan-tas-tic new skillet I half-acquired from Tom this week as we hauled a bunch of his kitchen stuff into my tiny kitchen.
I'm finally learning the extent of my hidden-under-the-carpet bachelorette neuroses, since I've been working about 6 solid years on this specific neurosis and never stopped to really examine it. I can no longer pretend that no one will notice that I tend to make small meals over my stove and eat them over the sink while reading short stories. I can no longer come home after a long day at work, strip down to my skivvies and lie on the couch watching vapid reality shows on Bravo on Monday or Tuesday nights without someone calling to ask what I'm doing and catch myself when I want to bluff and say that I'm doing something meaningful and grown-up. I have to fess up to the fact that sometimes I come home from the gym so hungry that I could eat the wallpaper off the walls, and sometimes I eat three wheat thins with peanut butter for dinner and couldn't dream of eating anything else.
Food and love seem somehow impossible to separate. I certainly am guilty of eating when I feel especially emotional sometimes... I feel mortified when the person I love sees what a lame chef I can be... I feel sad when I try to show my heart and my love by making food and it goes awry (and up in smoke). I guess it's going to take longer than overnight for me to feel like I don't have to hide who I really am. I'm not even sure that I *can* do that. I thought it would be easier, but it's not, and in some way that's valuable... it means that I really am willing to *work* for this, and it doesn't just happen easily. My heart twists every time I'm reminded that now someone else will see my standing-over-the-sink meals... that my Friday night take-out schedule will be exposed... that the fruit I keep in the fridge a few days after it died will be noticed and I'll ahve to admit to the fact that I was just holding out hope in its restorative powers because I'm cheap and blueberries are not.
Another long, rambly letter into the white, forgiving rectangle of my laptop...
to the sounds of percussive laundry thumping in my washing machine, the smell of garlic on my fingers... the warm and complex sounds and smells of domestic life in my small, flawed, but much-loved home.
I could never be a city girl. Home is right under my nose, and I can barely get a grip on that. I don't need a bridge and tunnel mindset to complicate Home any more than it already is.
(And because there's something about vintage fashion that gives me a glimmer of hope that somewhere-- beneath the snark and the unkempt hair and the dorky threads-- somewhere under the double braids on top of my head and the Patagonia waffle-print hoodie I hid in all day lies a woman who's normal enough to melt a little bit at the sight of truly beautiful dresses.)
This week has been so crazy. A week ago from yesterday, Tom and I had just settled into the couch with vino and a big bowl of popcorn to watch the season opener of Mad Men when my mom called from her never-used cell phone-- there was a strange calm tone to her voice, and the first thing that she said was that she was in the car because the emergency room cardiologist had said that "he'd live"...
I was so, so sure she was calling to say that my father had suffered from a heart attack that it literally took me about 15-30 seconds after the fact to realize that she had used my uncle's name instead. My uncle had a severe heart attack and-- according to the emergency room staff-- if the ambulance had spent up to one minute more rushing him there, he would no longer be here. It was hard to believe that this had really happened until I saw him two days after his quintuple bypass... pale and a little blue and his face twisting in agony from how uncomfortable he was, lying naked except for a twisted sheet and hugging a heart-shaped pillow in the ICU because even putting his arms at his sides could've caused another attack.
It surprised me that he had a heart attack, and even more surprising somehow that the hospital sent him home today... just because the robin's egg hue of blue I saw in his cheeks was such a sign of robin's egg vulnerability in one of the only family members I have, and I don't like the idea of him being home without the male nurse from New Orleans sitting right outside his room, watching to make sure that the heart monitor reads 'normal' and his breathing is ok.
My uncle and I aren't as close as I wish we were, but we're as close as I could get considering the dynamic of my family. Aside from my parents, I have one uncle and one aunt who I have any relationship with, and they just have three kids between the two of them (who I speak to once or less each year). My uncle is the only person I could call if something went wrong at home and we needed help. He and I didn't have much of a relationship until two years ago when my parents were in Europe and my grandmother had a stroke and was sent to assisted care-- then it was 6 or so weeks of seeing each other almost daily, and it was the first time as I saw him as a son instead of just my cousins' father. Ever since, I've wanted to know him better as a person-- I've wanted him to know me better outside of the "would you like me to tell you a story about when I lived in Brazil" conversation we have once a year over turkey at my parents' 4-person holiday table.
I was so scared when my mom called. I genuinely panicked... just for a second... and when the panic lifted and my mom kept calmly describing the ICU at the hospital, I felt like someone had pulled my rib cage out of my chest. I didn't even know if I could stand up straight. I felt like someone had just said-- "your family just got taken away and you're totally alone... JUST KIDDING! See you tomorrow at work!" The rest of the week was an odd blur. I just felt numb and sleep-deprived and confused.
Seeing my uncle get better day by day has been incredibly important for me. If he's strong enough to heal at the age of 65 with what looks like (literally) a power strip embedded down the center of his sternum... after a quintuple bypass surgery and coming within a minute of losing his life... I certainly need to be strong enough to face my fears about family and isolation and emotional barriers between people I care about. I need to accept my family the way they are and do whatever I can to translate the immense but secret and pretzel-knotted love I feel for them. The past is the past, and although the family doesn't make much effort to connect, I can feel that all 4 of the cousins would if we had a chance. It's awkward, but we all really reach out to each other when we see each other. Maybe this is the event that makes us all work a little harder to be a real family... hair unbrushed, wearing old pajamas, speaking too comfortably to each other over mugs of coffee instead of what we've always done, which is to have predictable, 2-dimensional conversations over wedding cake or funeral home coffee.
In some ways, I think this might be one of my best chances to get what I've been trying hard to find in my family. I'm sad that 40+ years of heavy smoking probably is what we can thank for my uncle almost losing his life, but I'm bolstered by the fact that we're here, and we can actually help him heal because he lives 15 minutes away instead of across the continent, as it sometimes feels. I'm anxious to hug my cousins and reassure them that I'll do anything I can to smack the cigarettes and heavy power tools out of my uncle's hands as he recovers when they go back to their lives in Mexico and DC.
Anyway.
So there was that.
Now my arms are jello, not from panic, but from a long day of aggressive typing and phone number punching-in and stirring garlic into the ground turkey browning in the fan-tas-tic new skillet I half-acquired from Tom this week as we hauled a bunch of his kitchen stuff into my tiny kitchen.
I'm finally learning the extent of my hidden-under-the-carpet bachelorette neuroses, since I've been working about 6 solid years on this specific neurosis and never stopped to really examine it. I can no longer pretend that no one will notice that I tend to make small meals over my stove and eat them over the sink while reading short stories. I can no longer come home after a long day at work, strip down to my skivvies and lie on the couch watching vapid reality shows on Bravo on Monday or Tuesday nights without someone calling to ask what I'm doing and catch myself when I want to bluff and say that I'm doing something meaningful and grown-up. I have to fess up to the fact that sometimes I come home from the gym so hungry that I could eat the wallpaper off the walls, and sometimes I eat three wheat thins with peanut butter for dinner and couldn't dream of eating anything else.
Food and love seem somehow impossible to separate. I certainly am guilty of eating when I feel especially emotional sometimes... I feel mortified when the person I love sees what a lame chef I can be... I feel sad when I try to show my heart and my love by making food and it goes awry (and up in smoke). I guess it's going to take longer than overnight for me to feel like I don't have to hide who I really am. I'm not even sure that I *can* do that. I thought it would be easier, but it's not, and in some way that's valuable... it means that I really am willing to *work* for this, and it doesn't just happen easily. My heart twists every time I'm reminded that now someone else will see my standing-over-the-sink meals... that my Friday night take-out schedule will be exposed... that the fruit I keep in the fridge a few days after it died will be noticed and I'll ahve to admit to the fact that I was just holding out hope in its restorative powers because I'm cheap and blueberries are not.
Another long, rambly letter into the white, forgiving rectangle of my laptop...
to the sounds of percussive laundry thumping in my washing machine, the smell of garlic on my fingers... the warm and complex sounds and smells of domestic life in my small, flawed, but much-loved home.
I could never be a city girl. Home is right under my nose, and I can barely get a grip on that. I don't need a bridge and tunnel mindset to complicate Home any more than it already is.
posted by JustJane at
8:49 PM
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