Recently I've had two or three separate sources suggest that I set aside time for grief each day. There's an inherent misstep in that suggestion.
The misstep is the supposition that grief behaves.
Grief is a crock. It won't come out when you invite it, not even when you coax it out with pillows and your best journal and time alone and silent in the mountains. Instead it sneaks out, impervious to convenience, and smothers your attempts to do the laundry, to get a day's work done at the office, to have a logical conversation with an unrelated party.
Grief is a petty thief, stealing away what little resolve you have to soldier on, to persevere gracefully in the face of things, to remain intact once and for all.
Now I know why Daniel is afraid of water. It's not because he can't swim, or because he thinks the boat will turn him over and trap him like it did George. It's because he is so consumed by grief over I don't know what that he's already drowning. The waves have already closed over his head, and in his flailings he took hold of my arm and tried to drag me down to the bottom with him.
Like him, I hate and resent my grief, because it stifles me. It surrounds me, and keeps me from drawing a full breath lest it pour into my lungs like lake water. My ears pound with it, and my eyes swim with its blood. But I will not let this take me under.
11 September 2005
28 August 2005
Madge! I Soaked in It!
Someday I'll look back on today and laugh, but right now we are not amused.
What a colossal waste of a day. For some unknown reason I decided that I would colour my hair to get the highlights back in it for the wedding.
Also for some unknown reason, all hell broke loose on the top of my head. Sisters, I'm talking Baskin Robbins. I looked like a slushee for a couple of hours there. Thank god for Lisa, who called from Peoria to tell me that the household product most likely to tone down an accident of crimson proportion is....good old Palmolive.
Nevertheless, it did a number on me and I've now got an appointment at something inexplicably called Atelier Premiere Salon de Frou Frou or some fool thing, where tomorrow for more money than I undoubtedly have Heather will do something called "single process colour." I hope she also does something that I call "fix."
This is what happens when you let wedding planning go to your (admittedly now very squeaky clean) head.
What a colossal waste of a day. For some unknown reason I decided that I would colour my hair to get the highlights back in it for the wedding.
Also for some unknown reason, all hell broke loose on the top of my head. Sisters, I'm talking Baskin Robbins. I looked like a slushee for a couple of hours there. Thank god for Lisa, who called from Peoria to tell me that the household product most likely to tone down an accident of crimson proportion is....good old Palmolive.
Nevertheless, it did a number on me and I've now got an appointment at something inexplicably called Atelier Premiere Salon de Frou Frou or some fool thing, where tomorrow for more money than I undoubtedly have Heather will do something called "single process colour." I hope she also does something that I call "fix."
This is what happens when you let wedding planning go to your (admittedly now very squeaky clean) head.
11 August 2005
I Was a Rebo
I was a Rebo. (ree-boe)
I cannot explain a Rebo to you, really. Alas, Rebos are now defunct. Rebos all had their lockers in (of all places) Rebo Hall. No one really knows the origin of the word "rebo," nor why some people insist it is spelled "rhebo," so don't ask. Anyone left on the planet who still knows no longer has enough teeth left in their head to tell us.
Rebo Hall was a short, side hall that dead-ended at the stage doors to the auditorium. There were all of two classrooms in Rebo, one of which was the English classroom of the theatre director.
Art and theatre geeks had lockers in Rebo, as did the occasional punk radio geek, band geek, darkroom geek, journalism geek, or geek-geek. Lockers in Rebo were not "assigned" by the office (well, they were, but if you found an assignee in "your" locker on the first day of school, they usually gladly left for a locker somewhere in the main hall where all the cool kids were). Lockers in Rebo were bequeathed by their previous tenants. There was a caste system (no pun intended) in the locker assignments as much as there was in the acting and tech sub-groups of Rebo.
My senior year, my crowning glory. I had locker 679. All a tech girl could ask for. Well, that and getting assigned as light board operator for the spring musical. Locker 679, in addition to having the 7 scratched out, was the locker closest to the stage door, in a row of exactly three lockers. Locker 679 had been handed down through the eighties and into the early nineties, from Shelly Kierman, before her from David Palmer, before David from Andy Walsh (not even my older sister, former tech geek, had reached 679), and Andy had inherited it from......insert angelic chorus......Susie Crowell. (production note: the supporting cast sighs dreamily, men in angelic lust, women in plain envy of her beauty and sweetness: "Susieee Crowelllllll......") The high point of my senior acting class--much of which, oddly, involved chopping vegetables--was when the theatre director was giving notes on a scene and he growled at me, "and get your damn hair out of your face, you look like Susie Crowell." I walked on air all day. I had been compared to Susie Crowell!
I still have dreams about high school, and in these dreams the locker combination has not changed, which is funny, because we each had our own locks--but in each dream, the success of the dream as dream vs. nightmare depends on whether or not I can get into this locker.
But regardless of how the dream turns out, in real life, I was a Rebo. The last of the Rebos, in fact. They tore the lockers out several years ago, as part of renovation. This summer they renovated the auditorium, and moved stage storage. Harry retired. Susie is married and living in Baton Rouge, but soccer players get nose-jobs and act in Oscar-winning films. Rebo Hall is dead.
Long live Rebo.
I cannot explain a Rebo to you, really. Alas, Rebos are now defunct. Rebos all had their lockers in (of all places) Rebo Hall. No one really knows the origin of the word "rebo," nor why some people insist it is spelled "rhebo," so don't ask. Anyone left on the planet who still knows no longer has enough teeth left in their head to tell us.
Rebo Hall was a short, side hall that dead-ended at the stage doors to the auditorium. There were all of two classrooms in Rebo, one of which was the English classroom of the theatre director.
Art and theatre geeks had lockers in Rebo, as did the occasional punk radio geek, band geek, darkroom geek, journalism geek, or geek-geek. Lockers in Rebo were not "assigned" by the office (well, they were, but if you found an assignee in "your" locker on the first day of school, they usually gladly left for a locker somewhere in the main hall where all the cool kids were). Lockers in Rebo were bequeathed by their previous tenants. There was a caste system (no pun intended) in the locker assignments as much as there was in the acting and tech sub-groups of Rebo.
My senior year, my crowning glory. I had locker 679. All a tech girl could ask for. Well, that and getting assigned as light board operator for the spring musical. Locker 679, in addition to having the 7 scratched out, was the locker closest to the stage door, in a row of exactly three lockers. Locker 679 had been handed down through the eighties and into the early nineties, from Shelly Kierman, before her from David Palmer, before David from Andy Walsh (not even my older sister, former tech geek, had reached 679), and Andy had inherited it from......insert angelic chorus......Susie Crowell. (production note: the supporting cast sighs dreamily, men in angelic lust, women in plain envy of her beauty and sweetness: "Susieee Crowelllllll......") The high point of my senior acting class--much of which, oddly, involved chopping vegetables--was when the theatre director was giving notes on a scene and he growled at me, "and get your damn hair out of your face, you look like Susie Crowell." I walked on air all day. I had been compared to Susie Crowell!
I still have dreams about high school, and in these dreams the locker combination has not changed, which is funny, because we each had our own locks--but in each dream, the success of the dream as dream vs. nightmare depends on whether or not I can get into this locker.
But regardless of how the dream turns out, in real life, I was a Rebo. The last of the Rebos, in fact. They tore the lockers out several years ago, as part of renovation. This summer they renovated the auditorium, and moved stage storage. Harry retired. Susie is married and living in Baton Rouge, but soccer players get nose-jobs and act in Oscar-winning films. Rebo Hall is dead.
Long live Rebo.
22 May 2005
Composting
Yes, you probably read that right. That's the only way I can think of to describe where I've been all year. Turning the pile, waiting for a bright red tulip to shoot up through the bullshit that I keep piling on just outside the door.
It hasn't been bad, mostly. It's been mostly good. It's just so damn much work. I'm not adjusting to moving in with someone, that's not a problem. Nope. What we're doing is different, scarier, more invested, and ultimately more rewarding. Thus more work. We're building a marriage. Which, of course, doesn't wait to start until September when the vows are said. That work starts every moment we are together.
And it's work.
I will never deny that it's worth it. Don't get me wrong. I am just having some trouble adjusting to the fact that building a marriage includes great quantities of garlic smashed potatoes stuffed straight into the refrigerator in their mixing bowl and the mixer left on the counter until I get tired of seeing it. That seems so much less fundamentally romantic than building love and trust and a foundation that our children can grow up in.
It's also yardwork, and remembering that one of us cannot go go go until after 9:00 at night without eating some sort of supper and then still be expected to function at work the next day. Not mentioning any names, of course.
8:30 on a Sunday morning: tea and a few doughnuts, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I'm actually caught up on sleep. Considering how much of it I've done in the past 36 hours, I should be alarmed if I weren't. And of course it's cloudy and rainy today. I didn't exactly want to spend six hours in the car yesterday, being lost and schlepping around doing the cleanup from yardwork. But at least I won't miss it while I'm in the theatre.
Because Robin's film is finally out.
Why am I so frustrated? Is it the grey gloom? The fact that after all our exhaustion the house is still a goddamn mess? And always will be? Always so much to do.
Le sigh.
It hasn't been bad, mostly. It's been mostly good. It's just so damn much work. I'm not adjusting to moving in with someone, that's not a problem. Nope. What we're doing is different, scarier, more invested, and ultimately more rewarding. Thus more work. We're building a marriage. Which, of course, doesn't wait to start until September when the vows are said. That work starts every moment we are together.
And it's work.
I will never deny that it's worth it. Don't get me wrong. I am just having some trouble adjusting to the fact that building a marriage includes great quantities of garlic smashed potatoes stuffed straight into the refrigerator in their mixing bowl and the mixer left on the counter until I get tired of seeing it. That seems so much less fundamentally romantic than building love and trust and a foundation that our children can grow up in.
It's also yardwork, and remembering that one of us cannot go go go until after 9:00 at night without eating some sort of supper and then still be expected to function at work the next day. Not mentioning any names, of course.
8:30 on a Sunday morning: tea and a few doughnuts, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I'm actually caught up on sleep. Considering how much of it I've done in the past 36 hours, I should be alarmed if I weren't. And of course it's cloudy and rainy today. I didn't exactly want to spend six hours in the car yesterday, being lost and schlepping around doing the cleanup from yardwork. But at least I won't miss it while I'm in the theatre.
Because Robin's film is finally out.
Why am I so frustrated? Is it the grey gloom? The fact that after all our exhaustion the house is still a goddamn mess? And always will be? Always so much to do.
Le sigh.
28 January 2005
Gayatri Mantra
Theoretically that's supposed to help me get through this moment. The trouble is, I want to blip this moment. To get through it without identifying it, in all its discomfort and pain and crusty crankiness. But the only way out is through. I hate that.
How can I tell him again and again I don't want to go out to Reading this weekend? That being out there depresses me, to say nothing of the four hour drive each way. I have told him, and he was stunned, because he had never realized the trouble I was having, with those memories, and that anxiety. But these months later he's already forgotten.
And I'm tired. Not sleepy, not needing sleep or up too long or needing to catch up or nappish. Just tired. Done, drained, empty, in need of refueling, thud. Need to nurse my small self, this one-sprout seedling, without using up what little store of emotional reserve I have.
Not to mention I have the damn dog. The dog whom I love dearly, whom I miss when I don't see her for days....but it costs a lot, emotionally, psychically, to take care of an 87-pound being who misses her constant companion. (I should know. I don't weigh all that much more than she.) I want to wash my kitchen floor, lounge in front of the fire, pay the rent which was due last week but we managed to fuck up jointly, do nothing, do yoga, be Sara and absorb my tranquil surroundings.
How can I tell him again and again I don't want to go out to Reading this weekend? That being out there depresses me, to say nothing of the four hour drive each way. I have told him, and he was stunned, because he had never realized the trouble I was having, with those memories, and that anxiety. But these months later he's already forgotten.
And I'm tired. Not sleepy, not needing sleep or up too long or needing to catch up or nappish. Just tired. Done, drained, empty, in need of refueling, thud. Need to nurse my small self, this one-sprout seedling, without using up what little store of emotional reserve I have.
Not to mention I have the damn dog. The dog whom I love dearly, whom I miss when I don't see her for days....but it costs a lot, emotionally, psychically, to take care of an 87-pound being who misses her constant companion. (I should know. I don't weigh all that much more than she.) I want to wash my kitchen floor, lounge in front of the fire, pay the rent which was due last week but we managed to fuck up jointly, do nothing, do yoga, be Sara and absorb my tranquil surroundings.
10 January 2005
Hack.
It.
The catastrophic plague that has been sweeping the office.
Phloo.
I have it.
Great. I always wanted to be an It Girl.
Sherry, I need your snail mail address. The most recent one I have for you is the house in Brighton. Please email me. And yeah, this is what happens when you stick your head in an MDiv for a month. Shit happens, I get engaged and hit up by some serious microorganisms.
Let this be a lesson to us both.
I did, however, get a Christmas card from your mother congratulating me on my new job, so at least you're getting some of the news.
The catastrophic plague that has been sweeping the office.
Phloo.
I have it.
Great. I always wanted to be an It Girl.
Sherry, I need your snail mail address. The most recent one I have for you is the house in Brighton. Please email me. And yeah, this is what happens when you stick your head in an MDiv for a month. Shit happens, I get engaged and hit up by some serious microorganisms.
Let this be a lesson to us both.
I did, however, get a Christmas card from your mother congratulating me on my new job, so at least you're getting some of the news.
22 December 2004
On Setting a Date
I have been asked endless variations on this question since announcing my engagement Sunday evening. While I can no longer accurately and honestly respond with my original answer, the spirit of the response is the same.
My original answer, by the way, was, "All of my underwear is still in a box in a U-Haul. Give me a minute, here."
My original answer, by the way, was, "All of my underwear is still in a box in a U-Haul. Give me a minute, here."
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