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March 27, 2005
the invisible man's photo album
Here's where my therapist's office is. Here's my breakfast. Here's a skating rink. Here's a surfer. Here are a bunch of people I might know, or maybe not. Here's my hotel room. Here's a boat. Here's my office. Here's my apartment with clothes on the floor. Here are people's legs, maybe on the Metro, or maybe on a train. Here's a plane with passengers disembarking. Here's the baggage claim. Here's traffic, so you know why I was late, really, I promise, believe me. Here's the cable guy's truck. Here's a boat. Here's Spike. Here's a picture of the TV during a baseball game. Here's a bus. Here's new cars at a car show. Here's Wayne. Here's people at a presentation I'm giving. Here's a meeting. Here's a bus. Here's my life and not yours.
It's all here, except for me; I'm nowhere. Keep looking for me anyway. Or not. I'll support whatever you decide because I know how to accept consequences. Do you? You'd better learn.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2005
there's no money-back guarantee on future happiness
"Why are you so hard on yourself?" he asked me. We were sitting on the edge of a sea of glass and chrome in the only two comfy chairs in the room. Across the New Haven green I could see that the setting sun was turning the buildings orange. I thought how pretty the green would look if it was snowing, and said so. "Give yourself a break," he said.
If you're crossing the street against the light and a car runs you down, it's your fault but it's the driver's fault, too. Maybe he didn't pay attention and didn't see you. Maybe he was driving too fast. Maybe he thought you'd jump. But then if after you recover from your injuries--or maybe you're still limping a bit, maybe walking with a cane--you not only cross against the light again but stand facing the oncoming traffic trying to stare down the cars and you get run down... well, I guess that's your fault. It's not like you didn't know what could happen; you just didn't want to believe that you knew. And the thing is, you'd do it again if they'd only let you back out on the street.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2005
spite and malice
So being home makes me want to see home, and I take Herself and Moo and my nephew across the river and we drive along the shoreline--I get so lost in thought that I keep missing the roads I want to turn onto. We drive down Main Street and I point things out. There's Johnny Cake Hill. There's Library Lane. There's Duck River Cemetery. There's the Congregational Church.
"I got married in that church," I say.
She says, "To Daddy?"
"No, to J."
"How did you meet him?"
Moo says, exasperated, "Don't you already know the answer to that? You ought to know it by now; every time we come back here we have to hear Mom's life story. Every frickin' time." I look at him, shocked, and in spite of myself I laugh. It's true; I do this every time. I forget how this is so much more meaningful to me than it is to them.
When we get home I tell my sister what happened. She cocks an eyebrow at me, says to Moo, "I haven't heard that story so much; I usually hear about when she lived in Essex and used to walk every day to feed the ducks and blah blah blah." Yikes. Now I'm mortified. Mortified and boring, apparently. "Sorry," I say.
"That's okay; I know it's comforting for you."
Oh, and she is so right. I am comforted, and reassured. I was a child, and then I grew up, and this is where I did it. Things are the same but not the same--they look the same but it's decades later and they are not. I realized yesterday that I have known J. for almost 40 years. Yes, I'm beginning to get a firm grasp on nostalgia. I don't have to worry or wonder about what's going to happen when I'm here--it's already happened, and I can let it be what it is. It can stay the same and it's perfect. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
snow day
We drove up in the rain and fog and traffic with the new windshield wipers leaving black streaks of rubber on the driver's side of the glass for the first 200 miles; listening to DC 101, which morphed into WXPN, which morphed into WBAB, which morphed into silence when Herself complained of a headache; up through the tip of northern Virginia along 95 through Maryland and Delaware, and 95 morphed into the NJ Turnpike and back into 95 again; up the coast as the rain turned to flurries, and by the time we were at my sister's house in Connecticut it was snowing for real.
The four inches of snow that would have closed schools for two days at home only warranted a 90-minute delay up here. The power went out in the middle of the night and I woke up freezing and lay listening to the silence of the house--at home the quiet is just an illusion, a scrim that pulled aside lets you hear the hiss of tires on the highway. Up here in the middle of the night I could imagine that I was completely alone in the world. In the dark. In the night.
I forgot how sadness travels with you even if you're four states away from its source. I thought about that until I realized I could see the objects around me and it was getting near actual morning, then I went back to sleep and dreamed that we were making love. "Do you want to know," you asked me, "how I feel now that we've been apart for six months?" "Yes," I said. "I feel absolutely no different," you told me. "I feel just the same."
That woke me up again, and it was truly morning and I could smell coffee. And now the day begins.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
Rain, rain, go away
No, we're the ones who are going. The first day of a mid-week vacation to my sister's house for Easter. We should be on the road by now, but here I sit with Spike, I'm still in my t-shirt and underwear. Children asleep. It's raining and raining--I hate driving in the rain and for some reason even though I have made the 400-mile drive alone plenty of times, this time ... well. This time. Firsts can be hard. So maybe that's why I'm still here to write this.
I couldn't figure out what to pack and what to leave, so I packed everything. As if I'm not coming back. I guess I could not come back, depending on how it goes up there ... and up there feels more like home than down here does, now. People who love me, want me there, want me with them.
Herself and Moo have begun to ask Why don't we move?; let's move; let's leave; let's go.
Let go.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky--as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their thick, strong wings.
Landscape, by Mary Oliver
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
He said to me, "I know that on the other end, with you, I'm safe."
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold
Something new, we both say. Make something, forge something, start something new. We say it a lot.
When I think of something new, I think: peace, love, joy. Who wrote this?: A marriage of true minds. That would be new.
When you think of something new, what do you think? You never say. Do you think what I think? Or do you think: leave me alone; that would be new.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. On mornings like this the day is already old when I get out of bed.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2005
lost in transition
Today is the first day of spring. I slept with the window open last night and when I woke up this morning I could hear birds singing like mad in the trees outside. They're all planning their next moves; they've got that spring-ritual thing down no question--now sing cuckoo (yes I know that's from a poem about summer).
So, wow: It's been a fall, and a winter, and it will be a spring, and I will be "going forward" and "living my life"--isn't that the most ridiculous thing; why do we use those phrases? Why do we act as if when we are in shock, denial, pain, we have somehow stepped back from--or out of--our life? Like we can stop it from going on, with us or without us, as if we are suspended in time rather than living it, traveling with it, traveling onward--wait a minute, wait a minute, just let me stay here for a little while; let me think, I can't think. Hold up, will you?
Now it's 7:45 and in a little bit it will be 8:00. Now it's foggy and damp and in a little while the sun will be out. Now everything is brown and in a few days green will overcome our little part of the planet. Now the days are getting longer and in a few weeks they will be getting shorter again. Now we see as through a glass, darkly, but then we see face to face. "In transition" you said yesterday; I wonder if you heard yourself say that, though I did, I heard you.
In transit from that, to this, to something else. Oh, and me, too--I know it, don't worry about that. You and me: two roads diverging in a yellow wood. From that, to this, to something and someplace else. From there, to here, to there. From living, to living, to living.
Posted by JudyLa at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2005
dream a little dream
So anyway, I was stretching last night after my workout and the woman stretching with me said "When I grow up, I want to look like you. Your body is perfect." She didn't look like she was kidding, but you never know. Still, I'll take it, I'll take it, and thank you, whoever you are. For those of you who will never lay eyes on me and for those of you who have and already know: No, it isn't.
So it was home again to make dinner, cajole the troops into eating it, cleaning up, finishing the Signet Program application, The OC, laundry, and at 10:30 I went upstairs, took off my clothes, washed my face, drew the curtains, and got into bed. I turned off the light and thought about the week, and about sleeping alone, and about all the nights in front of me of sleeping alone, except now I know they're out there and I chose them--no, I chose to believe they're out there, chose to stop believing in We Belong Together, no, instead it's Good-Bye To All That, okay--and I felt something, something like "oh well," which I guess was resignation, and I fell into sleep as if I was dropped from 50 stories up.
About a million years later something was shaking my shoulder. Shake, shake, shake.
No.
Shake. Shake. I opened my eyes a teeny bit. Time to get up? Looked at the clock. One-hundred-thirteen o'clock? What the hell kind of time is that? Oh. 11:34. Is that right? How can that be when I've been asleep for hours?
"Mom." Oh.
"What?"
"I had the dream again." This is the dream where The Other One kills me, then her, then her brother, then you, then himself. With a machine gun.
"Uh huh."
"Can I sleep with you?"
"Ughm."
That must have meant "yes" because three hours later there she was, in bed with me, kicking me awake, which is where I have been until now, and now it's time for bed.
Posted by JudyLa at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
Hangman
All my life I've been searching for something,
something never comes, never leads to nothing,
nothing satisfies, but I'm getting close,
closer to the prize at the end of the rope.
All night long I dream of the day,
when it comes around and it's taken away.
Leaves me with a feelin' that I feel the most.
Feel it come to life when I see your ghost.
Foo Fighters
Really? That's what this song is about? Hm. I like it because of the line about the prize at the end of the rope. And I thought the line that goes "I love it but I hate the taste" was about ... well, maybe it just depends on your point of view. But it is nice to see women get theirs once in a while.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2005
Moo
The mad cows of Diablo are forgotten for a while; now he's playing Resident Evil 4. He has an almost supernatural feel for the controls, as I guess kids of his generation do. Flesh-eating zombies, grotesque monsters, caves and caverns and deserted towns and mysterious strangers--the game is weird and fascinating and I wonder if he thinks about it the way I do: it's a movie and I'm the main character. Except that I am so used to movies instead of video games that I immediately become zombie lunch because I get so freaked out that I can't move. Game over.
I saw a lot of him this weekend while his sister was spending the night at her friend's house. I don't usually get to hang out with him any more because she gets jealous and he's mostly out with friends. But he made himself available and approachable for me. I'd forgotten how easy he is to be around and how much I like talking to him. Also easy to forget he's only 14 when we wonder about the same things, when we both like the new Foo Fighters cd, when he talks about you in a way that makes me see that he sees, and when we laugh at the same things in Arrested Development.
He changed the windshield wipers on my car for me. I knew he'd be able to figure it out; neither I nor my neighbor's husband could and it was funny to see him first giving instructions and then just taking over. No sighing or swearing, he just worked until it was done, no big deal Mom; now let me get back to the zombies. There's a world to save.
Posted by JudyLa at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2005
the March wind doth blow
It is late afternoon on a quintessential March day: scudding clouds gray and white; the trees and the grass and everything else, it seems, brown; warm enough to be chilly, but not chilly enough to be outright cold; windy.
Last night when I went to bed I listened to the wind knock the fir's branches against the house. It was late (well, late for me: midnight) and I stayed awake for a long time listening to the needles stroke the bedroom window.
Today was like all my other Saturdays: chocolate-chip pancakes and the gym and errands and laundry and more errands, interspersed with her haircut and his lacrosse practice, and that's how the day has passed. And your phone call, Mr. Weather Is Here, from San Diego: Did I delete your latest blog entry? It has disappeared. No, I didn't. But I love you, too.
And I guess that's about enough of that. A. says that I want to have you back and not pay attention to the reality of who you are. True enough. Once upon a time,
Posted by JudyLa at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
I am a self-empowered, radiant jewel
"No mooing tonight?" I ask him. "I could have mooing 24/7 if wanted, Mom," he says, shaking the hair out of his eyes so he can see the screen. "Does that excite you?"
Well, something's got to, I guess. Meanwhile I can't see the screen to type this because Spike is sitting directly in front of it. Move, you.
She's mad at me because when she asked if I'd help blow-dry her hair I asked her back if she'd combed it. "Never mind." Slam.
But the bills are paid, the kitchen is clean and in 20 minutes The OC is on, and it's a new one. Plus I've got magazines to look at and some catalogs to not order anything from. God, I love Thursday nights. When I was in college, Thursday night was party night and we'd usually sit in a big circle and pass around joints we'd made from the bag of pot that somebody paid $15 for; $20 if it was seedless. We'd all laugh like maniacs. It never occurred to us that what we were doing was illegal. That is to say, we didn't care. Everybody got high. It was cheap fun and it was the '70s.
Now, of course, my fun is considerably more tame. A lapful of catalogs, The New Yorker, and The OC. A glass of pinot noir. It has been a very, very long day and a very, very long week. I'm waiting for you to change my life, and patience is required.
This was my horoscope for today:
Anticipation can be exhilarating for a short while, but if it goes on longer, it's practically coma-inducing. When you find yourself waiting and waiting, repeat this mantra: "I am a self-empowered, radiant jewel."
Posted by JudyLa at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2005
If ever two were one, then surely we
So tonight I went to a Traveling Vineyard party, drank lots of wine, ate chocolates, mushroom quiche, cheese and salami and crackers. Sat at a dining room table in a big house with some other married women and passed around bottle after bottle of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, merlot, pinot grigio, cabernet, and I pretended I was like them and it was fun.
And almost the entire time I was there I was asking myself Where Did I Go Wrong? Why do these women have It and I do not? Where did I make the wrong turn, the wrong choice; pick the wrong door--it was the tiger, not the lady, that I chose, it was wrong, wrong, wrong, and although I am married, still, I am not married; I am not like these other women and though I can still say that I have a husband I do not really have a marriage. You said to me on Sunday "I love being married" and I thought What The Hell Planet Do You Live On? You aren't married, I am. But if only one of you keeps your wedding vows, does it count? Is it real? Or is it just an exercise in What If?
But meanwhile tonight there were the other married women: younger than me or not, prettier than me or not, fatter than me or not, but something else that I am not, that I have never gotten right, ever; and at this point in my life I think that I will never get right. They seemed so at ease in their lives and I wondered how they do it. How do you do it? What I wanted, what I want, is so simple, really: I want it; I want a husband who is my partner and lover, and I want middle-class, boring sex and the whole fucking American dream of what life is supposed to be, and I don't know how to get it. Apparently.
I want ... I want. To what point, I don't know. I could die with wanting, and for what. For quiche pans and toasters and coffee makers and anniversaries and growing old together and being loved and knowing you are with someone who wants to be with you, too, and why am I here with every fucking thing except what I really want. And the whole drive home I wished I could talk to you, I wanted to talk to you and I said to myself "call him," but why? I wondered, and then I knew that I wouldn't, that I won't, that I can't. I can't do that any more. O, discordia. I need to stay away from the married women.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2005
don't give away the ending
"I just wish you could be happier," you said. The sun was setting and the light coming through the windows was a little bit orange and the room dimmed as we talked. I was drinking a glass of cabernet. She was clamoring for dinner. Spike was asleep on your lap.
Happier. Oh, --is that all you're waiting for? Okay: I'm happier.
Now you.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
a formal feeling comes
Yesterday. The world is brown now, but green is on its way and the days are longer. A cardinal was singing when I went out to get the paper. In the afternoon I opened the windows, put Jack on his leash, went outside to walk in the perfect weather of a perfect Sunday. Breezy, warm, clear, cloudless; buds on the trees, crocuses coming up, the sun on the water; kites flying at the elementary school; kids hanging out. No coats, jackets, gloves, scarves necessary. Kind of a relief to see that, yes, spring is going to come again this year. Everybody who has been on hold since winter arrived can let go of the Pause button and take a breath.
Something's going to happen.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2005
don't it feel like sunshine after all
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain:
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard, and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fall'n, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen:
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death, and found it in my womb,
I looked for life, and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth, and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made:
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
Chidiock Tichborne
Posted by JudyLa at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2005
I'm in love with the ordinary
It's 9:00 on Friday night and I'm standing in the card aisle in Walmart looking for a birthday card for my niece. Why, I don't know exactly; I forget her birthday every year and by now it is way too late to send one. I'm not the best aunt. When I think of my skills as mother, cousin, aunt, "benign indifference" comes to mind. My first husband said to me, toward the end of our time together, "you are maternal in a completely non-nurturing way," and even though I have tried very hard to prove him wrong with my children, I do see his point. It takes a lot of effort to tend somebody so they grow well.
I drift down the aisle, look at the "love cards" section and say to the woman next to me, "Where are the cards that say 'you broke my heart and I think you suck'?" I've startled her. "Excuse me?" I'm too embarrassed to do anything but smile and move on. Yikes.
It's raining; I run to the car with my cart. There's an accident on Route 1 that has traffic stopped in both directions; I have to squeak by and take the long way home. Naturally when I get there I realize that yes, I needed laundry detergent and 3-way bulbs after all. Well, tomorrow is another day.
After I put everything away and give Spike the first-ever "cat treat" of his life, I check on the kids. Him first. "Moo. Moomoomoo." Jesus, does that game ever end? And what's with all the cows? I remember just then that I dreamed about cows the night before. "I'm playing with French people. I actually think I might be losing weight because I forget to eat while I play." Okay, great.
Into the next room. Earlier this evening when she and I picked up our usual argument I snapped at her, exasperated, "I can't make him come home. He's not coming home." Yeah. Non-nurturing, c'est moi. Now she's watching Full House, her new favorite show. No mothers in sight in any of the episodes, but lots and lots of little girls and daddies. Nine is not a subtle age. Oh, sweetie. She is wrapped up, and rapt. I let her be, and tiptoe upstairs.
A lot of what I like to do lately involves tiptoeing and sneaking. Like right now. I turn off the lights in the livingroom and the library and as silently as I can creep upstairs to my bedroom, close the bedroom door. Nobody knows I'm up here. I look at the bed. Clean sheets, nice plump pillows. Come on, you know you want it. I undress, pull back the covers, slide in. Mmmmmm. We all have our little addictions. I miss you like mad right now, but maybe it's just reflex. I stretch, turn over, look at your side of the bed. Put out a hand, close my eyes. Full house, indeed.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2005
and having writ,
"Daddy wants me to get another tattoo," I say to him. He's halfway down the stairs. He turns and looks at me. "He does?"
"Uh huh." I turn around, pull up my shirt and indicate the small of my back, just below the waist of my jeans. "Right here."
He watches my face to see if I'm serious. "Really?"
"What do you think?" I ask him.
His mouth quirks. "I think it would be disturbing, Mom."
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
diary of a mad housewife
The first thing is that I don't want to get up even though I've been awake since 4:30, and my head feels like a spike is being driven through it. But eventually the good coffee smell comes up through the grate and that is enough to get me to put my feet on the floor.
Coffee, the paper, a shower, down here to work. Except that I can't work because for the second day in a row I can't log on to the Citrix applications. "ACL File Not Found." Shit.
An hour and countless attempts to log on later, she gets up and I stop trying and go upstairs to help her get ready for school. I say to her as I wash her hair, "What on earth have you been in to? What's all this stuff in your hair?" Like grains of sand, except impossible to wash out. I stop, mid-scrub. Shit.
I call work. No, I will not be in today, either.
One call to the school later--they're so understanding that they promise me they won't let her back into the classroom until she's "clean," as if she's not, and as if she somehow manifested head lice through some kind of magic trick, on her own--I am putting on my coat to go out to buy some poison and a bunch of little teeny combs when the phone rings.
It's the lab. "We let your son's blood test clot." And this means what, exactly? "And this means what, exactly?" This means, exactly, that I get to make another trip to the lab and he gets to have more blood drawn.
To CVS and back, the poison shampoo, the poison gel, the little teeny combs, the crying. The phone rings. It's the pediatrician, who managed despite the clotted blood to get some results from the lab. "Well, he doesn't have mono now, but he did have it." Well, so what does he have now? "Maybe pneumonia. Go back to the lab and have a CDC drawn."
Then the laundry, all the blankets and sheets and towels and pillows and everything her head might have touched; the lice spray, the vacuuming, more laundry, her brother and the poison shampoo, and we get ready to go to the lab. She says to Spike, "Have you been eating dog food?" Holds him up to her brother. "Smell his lips. Do they smell like dog food to you? Mom, can I listen to my Bangles cd in the car?" Yes, I say.
But her brother has other ideas and wants to listen to Blink 182, and every time I put the Bangles in, he ejects it. He won't stop no matter what I say and I feel a familiar tearing sensation in the cheesecloth that holds in, just barely, The Mean One. I think Fuck This and tell him "Okay, I don't care if you get your blood drawn or not. You either get better or you don't; if you do you go back to school and if you don't you go back to the doctor. I don't need the bullshit. Now get out of the car." He does.
I drive to Safeway listening to the Bangles really loud and I buy a bottle of wine, and even though it is only 2:00 in the afternoon when I get back home, I open it.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2005
afternoon delight
School must be in session tomorrow or I cannot guarantee we'll all see the end of the week alive. For the past four days, while I work he sits opposite me at his computer playing Diablo. I have to keep asking him to turn down the sound of explosions, clanking metal, screaming, and, lately, what sounds like a herd of cows except they are actually saying "moo." Meanwhile Herself comes in every half-hour or to make a proclamation about how bored she is, or that she is hungry, or that she has nobody to play with, or that she can't think of anything to do.
"Why don't you walk the dog" I say hopefully, the way every other mother stuck at home with her kids these past endless days must be saying. "Why don't you go play in the snow." "Why don't you read a book." Naturally she does not want to walk the dog, the snow is too cold, she read all of her books already, Mom. "Well, tomorrow you will be back in school, so just enjoy your time off." To that I get in return "Thanks, Mom; now I have a stomach ache because you talked about school."
Eeesh. When I go upstairs to get a cup of coffee I stand at the front door and look out. The roads are clear and dry. The sun makes the snow drop from the branches of the pear tree; under the snow there are the first spring buds. It is March first. My neighbor comes over with a plate of cookies.
She also gives me a surprise present: a calendar on which each month displays a photo of some gorgeous tropical beach about a million miles from snow days, crabby children, and e-mail. I can hear from downstairs "moo. moomoo. moo."
I look at March: a beach in Puerto Rico, deserted. But--I squint just a little. No, not quite deserted. There. A single sun worshipper. I can just barely make me out, lying on a beach chair with my book, mojito at hand. The sun is hot, my drink is sweet, and I feel dozey. I yawn. Ahh.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)