Moving
Recently we moved. I am not a stranger to moving. Although my parents lived in our farmhouse for over fifty years, we had several year-long moves during my childhood. London-Dublin-London. We left for a full year on my father’s sabbatical and then bounced back with funny accents, lost friends, and travels all over Europe which marked us as snobs whose dresses were too short. It was the sixties. When I went to college I moved out and never returned. Eighteen, I drove my parents VW Beetle to an apartment. I eschewed the dorm and lived there for a year with almost no furniture and a roommate who could not cook. At all. Anything. Her freezer was stuffed with frozen steaks until she dated a goy, and the steaks ran out. I had the opposite problem dating a nice Jewish boy who wanted to live with me in utter poverty, probably in a teepee. My parents bought an off-campus house, so I stayed behind while he went off to a cooler school. The house was wonderful, and my roommate was a sweet pothead who fixed roofs.
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Diving into the Sulk
What is certain? Nearly nothing. Waiting is like purgatory that middle passage corridor I was told was the reason to christen me and give me a name I’ve never used. “Why did you baptize me Mary Ellen?” “Molly isn’t a saint’s name. You’d be a corridor baby.” The image of all these badly named babies, the misspelled and trendy, the nicknames and the silly, fill my brain. All those babies waiting to be allowed to enter a world deeply in need of their newness, their babyish ways, their ability to make adults feel helpless, uncertain, afraid. Love is standing on the edge of a cliff. Waiting hurts our soul. I wait to hear if my sister has died from the injuries experienced from a hit-and-run. She has. I still see that waiting room, her husband standing in the corner shoeless, my father stone faced, heart breaking fluorescent lights, wanting to turn on some innocent minor accident victim and demand to know why they, anyone, is still alive while my shining star has gone dark?
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How to Guilt a Victim
I fell. I fell on my way into Whole Foods after an excellent weight class that made me feel fit and relatively young. I’m 64. My left knee hit the concrete and all my not insubstantial weight followed. I tripped over the parking thingie which is called a stanchion which I remembered right before the screen went blank because my kneecap exploded. A nice father leaned down and asked, “Are you all right?” My ears were ringing and my teeth chattering so it took me a moment to say, “I’m fine.” His wife leaned down with her hand outstretched and somehow, I stood. I went into Whole Foods, rode the escalator up and put raspberries, salad, and inexplicably rice into the basket. We have tons of rice. It occurred to me I was in physical agony and so I decided not to tell anyone but to go home and ice my knee. Only our cat would know my shameful secret, I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time. It was my fault I hurt myself. Again.
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