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June 27, 2005
what happens to a dream deferred?
I tell Moo that if he waits until I get home from the gym I'll walk the dog with him. He waits, naturally, since waiting gives him even more time to play Diablo or watch television. When I get home it is early evening and the sky is turning pinkish. For dinner I eat bread and olive oil and drink a glass of wine. I talk to my sister on the phone while Spike noses the dish of olive oil and then sits, tail curled, watching me in case I do something interesting. I don't.
Jack is more than ready to walk and we step out into the still, heavy air. Our neighborhood is quiet, without even the other usual dog walkers. Moo talks to me about not being able to sleep the night before and getting out of bed to burn a cd, about his friends going away for the summer, about his summer homework assignments. Mostly I listen, sometimes I forget and think about things his father and I said to each other this morning until Moo brings me back to the real world again. I don't want him to think I'm not paying attention and so I make an effort to stay here with him.
Fireflies rise from the grass at our feet like a fireworks display in miniature. Green light flashes and swims in the air. When I put my hand out I easily capture one and hold it for a bit before letting it fly off. We walk down to the circle, Jack panting, and turn around to come back home. Herself rides her bike out to meet us, and for a moment I don't recognize her at all. She'll be 10 next week and all of a sudden she's a big girl. When did that happen? I tell her "I didn't know it was you!" and she's pleased. She wants to be older, wants her life to start she tells me. She's got this funny idea that when you're older you are somehow more in control of your world and can prevent anything bad from happening. I hate to tell her, and so don't, that it's not the case. Instead of your parents telling you what's what, when you grow up it's everything around you, it's the world that holds you down and puts that spoon of bitter medicine to your mouth.
Jack's ready to go home, and so we walk back up the hill together in the twilight. Tomorrow is another day.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2005
Dear Diary,
It hasn't been a very good week, all in all. The things I hoped for and worked toward seemed to elude me, along with my ability to get more than a few hours of sleep; I felt unengaged and underappreciated at work, even though it has started to occur to me that for almost a year I've been sleepwalking through every workday so what do I expect; and on Thursday I gave in to temptation, got sneaky and found something out that I both wanted and needed to know and dreaded and tried to avoid knowing up until then. Since I was underhanded in my method of finding this information out, I suppose you could say--I suppose I could say--that I got what I deserved. And while I had told myself that whatever I found out would not make a difference in how I feel about the person involved (The Husband, why beat around the bush), it has made a difference. Makes a difference.
I happen to subscribe to the "knowledge is power" philosophy, so now it falls to me to use my newly gained information/power to change something in my world, and I'm not ready yet. That is to say, I was hoping to have a couple of more months at least--a couple of more months of oblivious wishing and hoping and believing in what isn't true and pretending I haven't collaborated in the lies told to me. But since I had to go and ruin it for myself, now I need to Be A Grownup and follow through, and I don't wanna.
The frightened Me says "Well, what's the big deal? Any love, any kind of love, is better than no love. A constrained relationship is better than none. Standing in line is better than not queuing up at all. Take what you get, because at least it's something, and be okay with it." The Me that's been in therapy for almost a year says "You aren't okay with it and you never will be. What does he say to you? 'I love you, and we can work through this.' What does he say to The Other One? You know what he says to The Other One; he says the same thing, and more. And more."
And more. And the scale in my head, balanced ever so precariously, has taken a definite dip to the other side. I can dangle here in mid-air, so to speak, or I can get off. I'm pretty tired of dangling, actually. In my heart, I know that The Husband loves me, but more than that he needs me. He needs me to be the anchor that will hold him in the ordinary world until he figures out how to make what he's doing ordinary. Until he learns the rules and learns not to mind so much being there instead of here, learns not to fight it.
And what do I need? I need More. I need a husband in the real sense. I need someone who trusts me enough, loves me enough, and wants to be with me badly enough to work through this life together. I need someone who loves me enough to be with me, here. And I don't have that. I can't do this marriage all by myself; it's like the sound of one hand clapping--it's nothing. Nothing real.
I'm going to be 50 in four months. Have I really learned nothing in all this time? Do I really believe that I don't deserve more than this? As frightened as I am to admit it, I deserve more than this.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2005
I hope you know that when it's late at night, I hold on to my pillow tight and think of how you promised me forever.
We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.
Alfred Adler
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
Anais Nin
I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.
For this reason loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love." Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity.
Carter Heyward
Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
Rose Walker
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2005
and in the end,
Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be
shelter to the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be
warmth to the other.
Now there will be
no loneliness for you.
Now you are two persons,
but there is only one life
before you.
Go now to your dwelling place
to enter into the days
of your togetherness.
And may your days
be good and long together.
Posted by JudyLa at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
how to have fun in the kitchen
Take can opener out of silverware drawer. Remove cat from drawer.
Take plastic container from dishwasher. Remove cat from dishwasher.
Take can of tuna from cabinet. Remove cat's paws from cabinet. Close cabinet door, being careful of cat's head.
Open refrigerator to get mayonnaise and lettuce. Remove cat from refrigerator.
Open can of tuna. Push cat's nose away from can.
Put tuna in plastic container; add mayonnaise. Remove cat from counter.
Mix tuna and mayonnaise. Remove cat from counter.
Put lettuce in lunch container. Remove cat from counter.
Add tuna to lettuce. Remove cat from counter.
Give cat empty tuna can.
Open door to put empty tuna can outside in recycle bin. Retrieve cat from yard.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2005
Summer's here--I'm for that
And how. It's the longest day of the year, and after this they start getting shorter again, but it's a gentle slide and we'll hardly notice until the end of August, when nature and the inevitability of rules and regulations bring the school year back.
I have waited for summer to come around again since last summer, which ended so abruptly with a precipitous drop into (as the song goes) "hopeless, bleak despair." But I feel a little better now--or at least I have the capacity to tell myself that I feel better, and I hope that in a while they are the same thing--and when I am on the lake or sitting on the dock or out in the sun I don't think "if only" any more. Or at least I don't think that all the time.
I gave myself a year to do this; to fall apart, to be consumed, to rage at the world, to bang my head on the floor, to wallow, to grieve. And while I know that I will not be completely better, or "over it," or a whole new person by the end of this summer, I will at least know what I didn't know last summer: that I could survive death. The seasons change, the light grows and dims, the year comes and goes, and here I still am.
What the end of summer will bring and what changes the end of summer will bring I think I know; but I don't need to talk about it yet, especially when the air is warm and the breeze is kind, the light is on the water and the world is green. And it's really summer.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
I'm sorry but I can't just go turn off how I feel
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is not your system or clear sight that mills
Down small to the consequence a life requires;
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills
Of young dog blood gave but a month's desires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills
Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.
The complete fire is death. From partial fires
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
It is the poems you have lost, the ills
From missing dates, at which the heart expires.
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
William Empson
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2005
-isms
We are at kindergarten orientation, getting ready for the new year. Herself is very excited about starting Real School. Here comes her teacher. "How are you?" she asks, and Herself replies, "I see dead people."
Herself and I are floating around on the lake on our rafts; it's a Sunday, a lazy day, late afternoon. She says
"Mom, if our life was a movie, what would the title be?" I think for a minute.
"A Series of Unfortunate Events." I laugh, thinking how true this is. "What do you think the title would be?" I ask back.
"Life of the Living Death."
Thursday, early evening, Herself and I are at the last Brownie get-together of the year, at the Bridging picnic. To celebrate the transition from Brownie to Junior Scout, the girls literally walk across a bridge, leaving their Brownie sash and badges at one end and receiving their new Girl Scout sash at the other. As the last girl crosses the bridge and over to the other side to join the troop, Herself holds out her hand and says "Shake the hand of Doom."
In the grocery store this afternoon, with Herself and a friend of hers, buying picnic supplies. I am in the wine aisle trying to decide what goes best with hamburgers. I hear Herself say to her friend, confidentially, "My mom's going to get drunk."
Posted by JudyLa at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
you could be happy right here: it's the light in my eyes; it's perfection and grace; it's the smile on my face
It is late afternoon and I am sitting on the dock with my In Style and New Yorker magazines, having been dissuaded from going to the gym in favor of playing lifeguard for Herself and Moo and four of his friends while they swim--although to be honest if one of them were drowning there's not much I could do about it other than call 911, since they are all better swimmers than I am, even the littlest one, whose name is Noah and who is here because one of Moo's friends is his babysitter.
When I first came down to the dock my neighbor G. was floating around on a raft, smoking a cigarette. G. is the type of neighbor who if she sees your husband swimming makes it a point to put on a bikini and come out to swim as well. I usually try to avoid her, which has generally not been difficult because she hasn't ever had much to say to me. I wonder if she knows The Husband is no longer here to lure her out. Actually G.'s husband has been noticeably absent for quite a few months as well. "You're looking skinny these days," she calls to me. I am? I wait too long to answer, considering all the possibilities, and finally say "thank you." Thank you? Conversation ends there and as the teenagers begin to take turns hurling themselves belly-first into the water, G. retreats up to her house.
Noah and Herself spar over who gets to play with the floats until Herself shrieks like a teakettle and I make her get out of the water, whereupon she announces to me that she is going to call her father and "tell him how mean" I am, before stomping up to the house in a fury. Noah watches her with a bemused expression. Hey, bud, if you think you don't understand girls now, just wait.
A humid peace settles once more over the scene. The water is warm, the sky fuzzy and cloudless, it's hot hot hot but a breeze moves the tree branches over my head and I'm having a good time reading and sort of listening to the watery conversations, the topics of which seem to cover Sex in the City; school; the math final, which most people failed; a fellow student's b.o.; summer plans; and--briefly--incest ("not the gross kind, the hot kind, like in 'Flowers in the Attic' "). Hm.
They are all on the verge of high school and have this last summer of being in-between--not little kids any more but still too young to have real jobs and so free to enjoy their summer break for real. For Moo, summer means sleeping until noon every day and staying up all night. For Herself, summer means "no more stomach aches" (she has spent the last nine months living in fear of her teacher) and going to stay with her aunt in Connecticut.
Watching them all float around I remember what it was like to be their age and have all of summer stretched out in front of me; a vast expanse of heat and barbecues and ice cream and hours spent reading under the trees and riding my bike to the beach and marathon gin games. And late afternoons like this one, when the quality of the light and the air and circumstance came together and were almost painfully perfect, just like right now.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2005
just so
The Drink
I am always interested in the people in films who have just had a drink thrown in their faces. Sometimes they react with uncontrollable rage, but sometimes - my favorites - they do not change their expressions at all. Instead they raise a handkerchief or napkin and calmly dab at the offending liquid, as the hurler jumps to her feet and storms away. The other people at the table are understandably uncomfortable. A woman leans over and places her hand on the sleeve of the man's jacket and says, "David, you know she didn't mean it." David answers, "Yes," but in an ambiguous tone - the perfect adult response. But now the orchestra has resumed its amiable and lively dance music, and the room is set in motion as before. Out in the parking lot, however, Elizabeth is setting fire to David's car. Yes, this is a ontemporary film.
Ron Padgett
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
So much, and so little
Today it's going to be 95 degrees. Like the middle of summer and we've still got a week to go before summer officially arrives. It's the last few days of school and Moo and Herself are in countdown mode. "What are you doing for the summer, Mom?" Herself wanted to know. "I'm working," I told her. She didn't understand. "You don't have the summer off?"
No, I don't have the summer off. When I was her age, summer break began in the middle of May and all the moms stayed home. My neighborhood, on an Air Force base in New Mexico, was filled with kids. What did I do for the summer? Mostly I think I spent a good part of every day driving my mother crazy. I remember her sending me outside and locking the door behind me so I couldn't keep running in every 15 minutes to ask her for a drink (one of my friends' moms would lock the door but put a Tupperware pitcher on the front porch, filled with iced Kool Aid).
Left to our own devices my friends and I would walk to the store and buy Necco Wafers to eat on the way home and Matchbox cars we'd build elaborate road systems for in the dirt of somebody's back yard. We'd spend mornings hunting for lizards--sometimes we caught them and sometimes we only got their tails. We'd spend afternoons lying in wading pools, letting the gaspingly-cold water from the hose cool us off; or we'd play on somebody's Slip 'n Slide. We'd run up to the baseball field and play under the bleachers. If we got thirsty we had learned to suck the water from the in-ground sprinklers--it tasted nasty, like dirt, but that was part of the appeal I guess. We'd sneak into the officers' neighborhood, where the houses were much bigger than our own, and eat the plums off the trees in their front yards. We'd set up a record player in somebody's carport and dance to 45's--Elvis, Herman's Hermits, The Beatles--learning to do The Twist.
In the evening the air smelled like grass and the mountains would turn pink as the sun set. We'd ride bikes until it got dark and the street lights came on, which was the signal that it was time to go in. I remember going to bed while it was still light out--something my own children would never do, and I can't blame them. I hated it, and felt that the whole world was still awake and having fun while I lay in bed and listened.
What am I going to do for the summer? I'm going to get up early and come down here to work every morning. I'm going to drive into the city and come home in traffic every afternoon. I'll worry about my kids and wonder what they're doing. If I locked them out of the house I expect I'd have Social Services at my door in an hour. It's a different world now, naturally. "How can you let her just roam the neighborhood?" one of my neighbors asked me last summer, watching Herself ride her bike up and down the street. How could I? How could I not? That's what summer is for.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2005
Your everlasting summer
Last week I wore sweaters and it rained; today it was 90 degrees, the sky cerulean blue, the sidewalks cooler than the steaming streets but not much. Everybody was out walking at lunchtime and probably we were all wondering the same thing: why the hell didn't we take the day off?
Naturally because the first really hot days are here the air conditioner has ceased to function. On Monday night before we left for Moo's graduation/award "ceremony" (which consisted of herding about 200 people into hideously uncomfortable plastic chairs and forcing them to applaud for children whom they mostly did not know, and who looked almost exactly and eerily like each other in dress, hair and attitude, for two and a half hours), I had turned the thermostat to 75 degrees; when we got home while lightning played at the horizon and a storm was on the way, it was 80 degrees in the house and the air that was furiously blowing through the vents was lukewarm. "Tell them to take the fucking thing out and give us one that works," advised The Husband calmly while I left a message on the emergency line of the company that installed the unit not quite two years ago. That will be $8,000 please, and as an added bonus it will break down whenever the seasons change.
The company promised to send a repairman tomorrow, when I work at home, but instead sent one today when I was at work in the city. When I got home and saw the cheery "sorry we missed you!" note on the door, it made me very sad. Now it is 85 degrees upstairs and the fans are busy stirring the hot air around. Spike lies boneless on the kitchen floor; Jack sits in the livingroom, panting.
Herself is upstairs in bed and Moo and I are down here, where it's slightly less roasty. Tonight to get some fresh air we took Jack for a walk and the first fireflies of the season were lighting up the not-quite-summer evening. Moo and Herself caught some in their open palms and the world gradually got darker, though not cooler.
But really, I love this weather and I'm glad to see the long and longer days--another season coming around. A fall, a winter, a spring, a summer. Full circle, almost. In honor of almost-here, a poem by Philip Larkin.
The Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2005
the big red one
I love my next-door neighbors, B. and N. They are friendly, but not so friendly that I have to sneak out my front door for fear of them catching me. They are quiet, but not so quiet that they never have parties, and when they do they usually invite me. They share their mower with me and ask only that Moo use it on their lawn once in a while. And they give me stuff. They have a house in Puerto Rico and go there fairly often, and B. asks me to water her plants. In return she brings me presents: a can of black, delicious coffee that I make on special occasions; rolls of chewy fruit candy that Moo and Herself shun and so I have it all to myself; fudge; a calendar. I make out pretty well.
B. and N. spent May in Puerto Rico, the entire month, and I was in charge of the plants, as usual. Unfortunately I did not do a very good job with the plants this time; in fact, I killed two of them through sheer neglect. When B. left them they were vibrant, leafy--just two weeks later they were husks of their former selves. The water I poured on them, too late, crying with guilt, failed to revive them. In shame I was forced to go out and buy replacements.
That I failed miserably in my one task did not prevent B. from giving me presents when she returned, however. Another can of the wonderful coffee, more chewy fruit candy, and this time also a pretty darned big bottle of coconut liqueur, yum. I love coconut. I was so excited that I figured I'd have it that night, over my coffee ice cream. Coffee and coconut--the only thing that would have made the combo perfect was if I'd had some hot fudge to add. But I didn't.
Anyway, so after dinner I got out the Edy's coffee ice cream I'd been hiding from the kids, and the bottle of coconut liqueur. I opened it and tipped it over the ice cream.
I don't exactly remember what I had been expecting to see, but what came out of the bottle was creamy, thick, opaque white, viscous ... can you kind of tell where I'm going with this? I looked at the stuff and, well, let's just say I felt like I was holding the world's biggest semen specimen. Ugh. There was my nice bowl of coffee ice cream and there, on top of it, kind of sludging around and drizzling slowly down to the bottom of the bowl ... oh, man. It smelled like coconuts but I could not convince myself that it was, and I am not kidding. I had to throw it down the sink. No dessert for me. I thought, do B. and N. drink this stuff? Do they even know what it looks like? Do they not notice? Or maybe they do notice and they were playing some kind of practical joke. Or maybe giving me a walk down memory lane. Or maybe they're secret swingers, and this is some kind of subtle--or not so subtle--invitation? Whatever, I put the top back on the bottle and put it away. In a hurry.
So now I have a nice, big bottle of something in my refrigerator, where it is probably getting even more turgid. Something I will never be able to serve to anybody, at least not with a straight face. Something I will never be able to bring myself to ingest, no matter how long it's been. And now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to start avoiding B. and N. after all, because if they catch me between front door and car, and ask me how I liked the coconut liqueur--
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2005
in dreams you're mine, all the time
Is it possible for something to be the best part of the day and the worst part of the day at the same time? I don't mean a la Charles Dickens (I don't think I do anyway) ... I mean for something to be both the best and the worst together. For me it's after Herself is asleep and Moo is--well, Moo is probably downstairs watching television or playing Diablo or listening to his radio or reading or staring off into nothing, as he and most insomniacs might do on occasion, or on most nights--when the house is quiet and it's time for bed.
I know I've written about night and bed before, but there's something about that time--I don't know. I think about it during the day. The curtains closed. The light over the bed. If the windows are open, the sound of the chimes, soft and lazy, barely stirred by a breeze. Geese arguing furiously out on the lake for a minute and then suddenly falling silent again. The house is quiet. I wash my face, put on a t-shirt, get into bed with a book and pull up the blanket. Lie there and listen to the night world. I am so happy to be there, warm, propped on my pillows, the whole bed mine all mine. I spread out, get right in the middle of the bed without worrying about taking up too much space. I yawn, close my eyes for a minute. Who knows what great dreams I'll have, and how delicious it will be to know that I'm drifting down, down into sleep--or maybe I'll close my eyes and I'll be gone, just like that, pushed over the edge.
The light over the bed. If the windows are open, the sound of the chimes, soft and lazy, barely stirred by a breeze. Geese arguing furiously out on the lake for a minute and then suddenly falling silent again. The house is quiet. I wash my face, put on a t-shirt, get into bed with a book and pull up the blanket. Lie there and listen to the night world. I feel the emptiness of the house, the bedroom, the bed. I think about how much I took for granted, all the nights I went to bed wanting only to be left alone. Be careful what you wish for, as they say. And now I lie in bed with books for company and if only, if only there were a knock on the door and someone would come in and lie down with me, just lie down with me for a while, just another body there in bed with me. But that's so not going to happen. Who knows what dreams I'll have, and whether I will be able to sleep--or maybe I'll close my eyes and I'll be gone, just like that, pushed over the edge, and wake up in an hour or two and lie in bed. Listening to the sound of the chimes, soft and lazy, barely stirred by a breeze. Until morning.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2005
a celebration to last throughout the year
1. tick. tick. tick.
2. 50/50.
3. please stand by.
4. avoid obstacles.
5. adventure / risk.
Happy Birthday, dchb!
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)