list three: tirekicker

1. In this house, it does not feel wrong to play jazz from about two in the afternoon on. It doesn’t even feel wrong to play it through my computer speakers instead of using a full-rigged vinyl setup. This house has history and is not fazed by anything. It’s a survivor. The paint on the baseboards and trim is thick with age and necessity (and probably lead paint) and the echoes of a dozen people in the past hundred years who said don’t worry about it; put another coat of paint on. Maybe more than a dozen. All I know is that here, Myron comes home happier than he has in years, and that sometimes there is frenetic percussion and sometimes a neverending clear note from a trumpet playing when he walks through the door, and for the first time in more than nine months, we have had dinner together for a full week.

2. List-within-a-list of things I should tell you about at some point before I forget them completely: spending time with Aurore and NoShrinkingVi in Toronto, the little apartment where I spent the time in between houses, the people I met on the train, the way it feels to black out from coughing, the books I’ve been reading, the way Myron looked in the lobby of the train station that made me think of that bit from “Love Among the Ruins”—

   When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
       Either hand
   On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
       Of my face,
   Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
       Each on each.

We did, in front of a tiny elderly gentleman from India that I met on the train who was heading north to see the aurora.

3. It sounds dreamy, doesn’t it?

    3a. Except for that coughing bit. The plague came and stayed with me for almost two weeks, and tales of illness are boring, but my god. And so cold! The temperatures have come up in the past week, but the memory of those days of -22C is not leaving me anytime soon. Winnipeg, you sure know how to welcome a girl.
    3b. Then there’s the carpeting on the second floor that needs to be pulled up and replaced—a beige berber with strands of orange and brown, matted and lumpy and with just enough eau de chien to necessitate replacement. (In Myron’s defense, his nose couldn’t detect the dog smell when he visited the house before buying it, and my nose is much more sensitive than his.) Doesn’t make much sense to fill bookshelves and dressers and closets when you’re just going to have to move it all later, right? We’re craving permanence but must obey the order of operations. So these days, we live out of suitcases and count down the days until mid-March when the lovely replacement carpet will go in. Then we will fix up something else. But first, I want to find the box with all my candles. And my Felix Palma books. And that little jar of yellow curry paste I tucked away somewhere.
    3c. And oh. There’s that part where after all this time on my own, and after all his time living back with his parents, Myron and I had to get used to living with each other again. Kendra warned me it would be like this, and I didn’t doubt her, but the extent of it surprised me at times. It shouldn’t have! It was a long time apart. And the rough times weren’t a death knell for the marriage. But they were less than dreamy, and we are thankfully more in sync these days. We feel like us again.
     3d. The combined effect of these has predictable results on my internet use. Antisocial results. This is going to change.

4. I have not spent much time out in the city, which saddens me. (See 3a, 3b, 3c.) My camera has been largely unused. But there is time for all of this later, and right now is time for nesting. The results are going to be worth it eventually, or so I remind myself. The devil on my shoulder drums its fingers and says whenwhenwhenwhen. Maybe when I unpack my crystal ball, I can answer.

5. It is Scintilla season. A new round of prompts, a new and gorgeous website polished to within an inch of its life by Onyi (I mean, seriously, look at those colors), new people to meet, new stories to tell. Onyi, Dominique, and I have been putting plans in place off and on since late fall, debating what worked and what we could improve. Once again, we are brimming with optimism and anticipation. On March 13, the first prompts will go out.

Around Scintilla time last year was when my life started to wobble like a Jenga game that was ready to come to its natural end. I am almost afraid of spring coming, but in collecting and sorting the prompts this year, I found myself ready to tell stories anyway, and ready to read the stories you want to tell me. I am telling myself, and my shoulder-devil and you and anyone else who may be listening, that I do not have time to be afraid of anniversaries of bad things. I have time for good. I have time for you and your stories. I hope you’ll write them with us this year.

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For a while now I’ve been wanting to do a year’s worth of lists a la hula seventy. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

list two: uprooting

1. There were boxes everywhere, but mostly in a large stack in the middle of the basement, our books and papers and heavy, sturdy things. And then the closets, where I stacked our clothes and the things from my desk and the top of the dresser, heavy glass candles and dishes my grandmother made during the war. Myron came home late at night, exhausted after working all day and flying for hours.
2. Every time he goes away for more than a few days, there is a moment on his return when I look at his face and don’t recognize him. Then the truth of him reappears and I cannot remember what it felt like to be empty of it.
3. The next day, we packed and packed. I left too much of the kitchen to the last minute. We used more rolls of tape than I can even tell you, more boxes, more paper. He constructed two-box hybrids to encase mirrors, artwork, and even the plant he nurtured from tinydom into almost-treedom. Before eleven, we were done.
4. It was the first time ever—ever, in all my moves, and there have been so many—that I finished at a reasonable hour on the day I meant to, instead of staying up all night. Still I woke up needlessly early the next day, frantic and tightly wound. No matter how many times you go through this, I can’t imagine that it ever becomes routine and unsusceptible to gigantic error.
5. We slid our suitcases into the bathroom and tried to stay out of the way of the movers, who were everywhere. More snow had fallen the night before, and the door stayed open all day. We ended up hiding in the bathroom, devices in hand, while the heavy boots and low voices echoed through the rapidly emptying house. I thought to take pictures, but the scene was nothing I’d want to remember, so I left the camera in its case.
6. We cleaned. Scrubbed. I polished the refrigerator shelves and freezer bins and the cooktop. Myron cleaned the bathroom, swept the basement. The last thing I did was spray the almond-scented cleaner and buff the hardwood one last time. While I pushed the velvety mop in little circles, I invented and sang an impolite song that made Myron smile. No, I won’t sing it for you.
7. We caught a bus to the city. I dragged my massive suitcase behind me, mounted my backpack on my shoulders, wrapped myself in gloves and hat and coat. The cold was unbelievable. I stopped twice to cough and cough and cough. I walked along the highway for the last time, mostly on an unpaved shoulder. After about ten minutes I stopped feeling my legs, but somehow they kept moving. The hot breath trapped by my scarf clouded my glasses with steam. I counted breaths until I made it to the intersection, crossed the street, and then counted breaths some more. The suitcase lolled on its cheap wheels and I let it fall and picked it up again. I couldn’t speak the entire ride. In the hotel that night—the same hotel where I stayed my first night in Ottawa, the place where I said yeah, I could stay here—I slept like the dead.
8. Friday morning we signed a few papers and split up. Myron went to the national archives and I went for my last haircut with the astronomically talented Kim. I wonder about these curls and how they’ll fare in the hands of someone less talented. These days, they bounce and swoop and I should really take a picture of them before they grow out.
9. And then we left, and I feel like I should have felt more, but maybe I had spent so many weeks feeling so damn much that there was nothing left to feel. Instead, there has been gentle quiet in my temporary home, and no pressure, and sleep, and coconut sorbet, and a bit of transplant shock, and tabbouleh.

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For a while now I’ve been wanting to do a year’s worth of lists a la hula seventy. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

chrysalis

A chrysalis (Latin chrysallis, from Greek χρυσαλλίς = chrysallís, pl: chrysalides, also known as an aurelia) or nympha is the pupal stage of butterflies. The term is derived from the metallic gold-coloration found in the pupae of many butterflies, referred to by the Greek term χρυσός (chrysós) for gold. […] Like other types of pupae, the chrysalis stage in most butterflies is one in which there is little movement. (wikipedia)

I woke up this morning and remembered not to fling my eyes open. My apartment for these days is heated by efficient electric radiators that dry out the air and my corneas don’t care for this environment, but I smear them with gel at night and cross my fingers in the mornings. Two weeks from today, I will wake up for the first time in my new house. In the meantime, I am here in Toronto, in a lovely nook of a lovely old house a few steps away from bakeries and falafel shops. Snow falls sparingly but swiftly and silently. Curls of steam rise from the pot of water simmering on the stove a few feet away.

The habits of three-quarters of a year are not easily shaken. I cough and cough, and check the temperature (-14C! 7F! Too damn cold no matter which scale you use!) and look out the window to gauge the snow. In my head, I thought I would spend these two weeks out in the city, tramping and traipsing, camera in hand. But this stupid cough is lingering and my chest is congested and I feel tired and guilty for not seizing every moment. Myron reminds me that I’m supposed to be decompressing now, and not worrying about what’s not getting done. I understand this in my brain, but I’m not sure how to go about it. The things I’d love to accomplish this year line up on a list like CGI soldiers in an epic battle scene, wound like springs and ready. The thought of outfitting the new house is ominous. Furnishing it? Paint colors? Where my desk belongs? I can’t imagine; I haven’t been inside it and I don’t know how low the ceilings feel or how the echoes will resonate or the angle of the incoming light through the windows and these qualities, the ones that cannot be articulated in any realtor’s listing, decide things for me more than the photos of lovely interiors I have saved to my hard drive.

And ah, the email reminder about trash pickup just hit my inbox. But it’s for Ottawa’s trash pickup, and I clicked unsubscribe and there is one more dividing line between there and here and the next there.

Since I was a teenager, guilt has been a constant companion. I have guilt over things I can control and things I can’t and things that other people should really own instead of me. Once I hit my late thirties I was more able to say fuck it and not let it overburden me as much as before, but even then, it’s not something I succeed at more often than I fail. I have worn a dent in my shoulder, carrying this guilt around like a bag of groceries. And I would like to say No More, but I know that in practice saying No More is one thing and living it is another. It would take more thoughtfulness than I think I have in me right now. So I will still carry some guilt because I have this dent in my shoulder that makes it hurt a little less than it might if I were not shaped to carry it. I will wear it on my hips and in the creases at the corners of my eyes and behind the light reflected in graying hair. I will make promises to myself and the people who have to deal with me about letting go of it, piece by piece, when I can. I’m not stupid enough to think I’m hiding it, nor am I willing to take on any more than I already have. Every time I put down one more bit of it, I’m going to stand up a little straighter. I may even have put a bit down right now, by writing this, and I may leave it here in this little apartment that held me like a golden shell during a time of little movement and frigid temperatures and waiting for wings.

list one: things I worry about

1. that I have packed something that is crucial to us getting through the next four weeks, something crucial enough that it will result in wasting money and upsetting people whose jobs I have made more difficult out of my own airheadedness
2. that our internet will not get connected in a timely fashion in the new house
3. that I have spent too much money
4. that I will spend too much money
5. that I have written the wrong postal code on the Christmas cards I sent out with the new address
6. that there is a glaring, expensive repair that will need to be made on the new house within the first year
7. that the No Good Very Bad Ottawa Roofer will thrive in his business by taking advantage of others
8. that I will go stir-crazy on the train trip from Toronto to Winnipeg and start bothering strangers and/or begging them to play Train Yahtzee (the rules of which I will invent [guess where])
9. that I will get sick (again) sometime in the next four weeks because tis the season
10. that I will get sick of being so near my in-laws
11. that my in-laws will get sick of being so near to me
12. that after six months of lonely solo living, having to go through living-together rough spots all over again will result in sniping and eyerolling and bad feelings between Myron and me
13. that a 20-cm dumping of snow will happen on the day the movers arrive
14. that my ambitious hopes for the year will be forgotten by March
15. that I am going to break something impossibly old in the new house
16. that I will hate my book when I go back into this revision
17. that I will really miss my refrigerator even more than I think I will, and also, that this says something so materialistic and tacky about me that I should be ashamed of committing it to the internet (this worry tempered by Allison’s love of her own fridge)

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    For a while now I’ve been wanting to do a year’s worth of lists a la hula seventy. Let’s see how long I can keep this up. 

swaddled and celebrating

Years ago, years and years, long enough that I’m over it in lots of ways, we buried my brother on a December 31. At the same time, there are lots of ways that I’m not over it. I learned the difference between being gouged by pain and being beheaded by it. I am gouged by the fact that I could not call my mother yesterday and sing her birthday song or tell her that prime number birthdays are special ones, but my head is still here and she is not and I know the difference.

This is what you’re supposed to do after a loss. You differentiate. Eventually it becomes a story you tell from time to time, and a frame of reference, and some days it is the thing that takes you down. When you go a long time without being taken down, that’s something to celebrate.

This year, I have a tab open in my browser that counts down the days until Myron comes back, with his bag full of sanity and his way of looking at me that silently says how deeply I am seen. There is another countdown that numbers the days until I walk into our new house and let it wrap itself around me. In the meantime, I dodge the pile of boxes in my kitchen and uncork prosecco and allow the love of my friends to wrap itself around me. There was a time when this would suffocate me, but at this moment, it just feels warm.

I will be happy to see the end of 2012. I will be happy to have this manufactured fresh start dictated to me by the calendar and the rotation of the earth. I will be happy as I laugh loudly enough to hear my own echo off these walls, which are only mine for a handful more days. I will be happy when plans large and small come to fruition in this new year. And maybe this is the closest I come to prayer, to say that I will be happy and that I wish happiness for you in everything the year brings you. We’ve earned this one.