Raining on my parade
It rained for the last two hours of the drive. Really, the two hours and a half, but what should have only taken about one, except for the traffic jam getting off of I-95 and onto the Triborough bridge - 278. Of course, I nearly panicked when I passed 287, you see I am not necessarily dyslexic, or in this case, disnumeric, but I have the tendency to transpose numbers, and as I generally take the Tappan Zee bridge, and when I say generally, I mean all those trips all those years ago up and down the eastern seaboard from my parents house to Bryn Mawr and back. Huh. What love makes one do, and then pregnancy, and then visits to family and friends... It hasn't been so long, really. Only three years living out on the west coast, and already things seem strange.
It is like putting on clothing that you used to wear, years ago, and it isn't precisely that it doesn't fit, or even that it is unflattering, but just that you have forgotten how to wear it, or that it was waiting in a closet, in someone else's house, for your inevitable return. And it just doesn't feel right. I had that same experience in Manchester, driving around, it was all so familiar, like in a dream, only I had to keep turning around, and backtracking, and pulling onto side streets to take the long way around because I had forgotten which crazy lane shift I had to make in time.
I.'s visit to the hospital, however, was uncannily the same. The day we left NH, M.'s Rav4 packed to the brim with stuff, and the u-haul neatly hinged behind, she had a bit of a freak accident too, slamming her 4 year-old eyebrow into the corner of the free-standing stairway and bleeding profusely, though the ultimate injury was minor. This time there was far less blood, none, in fact, just an earring back that magically worked its way inside her earlobe, and sealed itself inside, like some medieval barbed weapon that enters smoothly, but eviscerates upon removal. The only blood came after the shot of anesthesia, the wait was much longer than it had to be, but that, I am afraid, is also par for the course when one goes to the emergency room for lesser troubles.
The rain was just another case of Murphy's law. Spectacular weather all week prior, and indeed after, but the two days we choose, I choose, let's be fair, I. had very little say in the matter and I just had to get away from my mother (who I adore, but who drives me mad. I mean, really, one is never truly allowed to grow up in their parents' eyes, and therefore is doomed upon return to eternally be treated as a child, no matter how many grey hairs, or white, in my case, they are sprouting -and there are quite a few, only from one spot, but there is an unsurmountable terror in this, I won't go into details.)
Jeff is waiting for us, and the computer-generated directions are perfect, and my execution of them is flawless, and it is still raining, but we don't mind. He lives a few blocks from Astoria park, in Queens, and we hug for a minute, and then let go, and then hug for another minute, because, in all honesty, although we read each other's blogs, we haven't actually talked since, oh God, since... has it really been that long? I feel like a terrible friend, but then, there are friendships that have weathered the storm of years and are just as comfortable picking up where the left off if it is a week, a month or a year. Jeff and I have this sort of friendship. Incidentally so do Laura and I, whose wedding was beautiful, and who made me all weepy and proud because she and Andy really are in love in that really sane way, the way that makes you think that the vows that they made, to respect one another and to accompany one another and to pick each other up when the other is down are things that aren't abstract ideas, but modes of behaving, ones that will be carried off with ease and style. I couldn't even be cynical because if two people were ever right for each other, they seem to be. But I digress, if there ever was a point to this rambling story.
So, we head for Indian food, but the place is divy and we decide against it, stop at a Morrocan café that is far over-priced, and finally settle for... a ham, egg and cheese sandwich, on a deli roll. This is NY after all. The apartment is really the first floor and basement of a large house, there are five guys living there, no more women in the house, and it is immediately apparent that a) they cleaned up because they knew we were coming, and b) it was a house inhabited by five (relatively) single guys teetering on the edge of their thirties. There were boy books by hip male writers: Murakami, Eggers et. al. There were books on gaming, and wii's (motion sensitive nintendo joysticker thingies for playing video games on a large TV), movies, movies, movies... many that I have seen, and like, but oozing with testosterone in a pleasantly familiar way. The kitchen was large and mostly empty, though in their defense they had quite an arsenal of cooking utensils and such. Not too many dishes, some weird brown sludge caked on the the stove top, but otherwise mostly clean. At closer inspection of course, and here I am ashamed of just how motherly I am, the counter top had a sort of sticky film that needed addressing, and so, when we awoke the next morning, in the spare bed in the basement, amid the multitude of musical instruments (they have a band, they have fun... makes me nostalgic for the days when I hung around houses like this, before I became... what have I become? Well, someone with matching sheets and bath towels, for examples, and a place to put musical instruments away when not in active use, for starters.) I took it upon myself to put away all dry dishes, wash up all the dirty ones in the sink, and give the stove and counter a peremptory (if not entirely thorough - there were no cleaning products readily available, or at least not obviously so) cleaning.
Andy, one of Jeff's roomates was especially warm, and good to talk to, and it made me happy to see that he is living with good people. We ate pizza and drank wine, and watched the third film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy- extended version- despite the fact that Jeff and I. and I had just been to the cinema to see Stardust based on a Neil Gaiman book that was, conveniently, available for perusal and comparison. But again, I meander through these thoughts as if they had some purpose, when in fact, there is no point.
I had wanted to share NYC with Isabella, to show her something new, something special, something that we could do together, alone, that is, just the two of us, as opposed to with the entire family, or boyfriends or husbands or what have you. My plan was destined to fail. No, not to fail, to fizzle. She whined quite a bit. Now, I must remind myself, as I reminded Jeff, this is an age of self-involvement, and no matter how smart and with it she may be, and she is - making more connections between films and actors than many of us-- she is an attention hound, unfortunately, singing "Dr. Worm" by They Might Be Giants, and mocking me when I ask her to settle by sitting in the middle of the porch in a lotus position and loudly ommmmmmming. So the grey gloomy day nixes our plans to see the Statue of liberty, but we do go, by ourselves, to the Central Park Zoo, or rather, Jeff drops us at the gate and runs an errand regarding his filming in Ohio this weekend, and I am left to feed my child a hotdog from a street vendor (we are in NY after all). There are no benches. We are on the edge of the Park, fifth avenue and 64th, at the entrance to the zoo. There are some muck covered and smiling construction workers, they sound Caribbean to me, chatting it up with a white lady in a suit, who seems to know them. I ask if I. can steal a corner of the bench, and one jumps up, obsequiously to offer us half the bench. I stand, in a dress and high heels. I have taken to dressing like a grown-up, too. I asks me why I look so "fancy" and I laugh because I don't look any more fancy than any other day, or than most other days, but these are new shoes, and oh my feet hurt, what was I thinking? But I am mistaken, they hadn't started hurting yet, not really, that was just vestigial pain from the wearing of other new shoes a few days prior at the wedding. Nothing hurts, nothing much, that would be later when we walked the twenty blocks up to Times Square to go to the movies again, this time to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For now, it is I. and I, and a hot dog, and a bottle of water that I slipped in my purse before stuffing the parking ticket which was too rain-drenched to read properly, or to even know if it was for me (though it must have been, right, as it was stuck between the body and the hood of the car, but I still couldn't read it, except the part that said $115 bucks and I didn't even flinch, or get angry, and this is a change, I mean, it must be... there is something to be said for travelling alone: when things go wrong, there is no one to blame but me, and since it is always my fault, there is no point in berating myself now, publicly, wouldn't you agree?). So I say to the man, who is smiling and friendly-looking, "you can sit, we don't need that much space" and he bounces a bit, and says, "oh, no, I'm cold..." and I should just have left it at that, but I have this irritating habit of making small talk with strangers, God I am turning into my mother, and so I say, "Oh, not me, I'm hot" which, of course, is true as I just walked the five blocks from the Subway at a brisk New Yorker's pace (following Jeff, obviously. When I am left to my own devices I wander more slowly and stare up at the cornices and glass, or at the throngs of people that throb in and out of side streets and thoroughfares.). "Don't I know it!" he exclaims, and I blush because he just made me seem like I was saying that I was "hot" as in "sexy" which was the last thing on my mind at that moment and wait a minute, I thought having I. with me was supposed to shield me from passersby and their appraisal of my (dubious) feminine mystique. I manage a smirking "touché" and he laughs, and I laugh, and it is ok, because he just wanted to make me feel good, which, in the end, he did. I. and I, hand in hand, enter the zoo, and wander around. I negotiate with her, and make her speak Spanish to me, mostly because it makes me feel like I am cloaked in more anonymity than I am, and of course, half of NY speaks Spanish, but I had forgotten that, and anyway, if I am going to be a tourist, I might as well seem as if I am exotic and foreign instead of pedestrian and practically local, but just country bumpkin from up north, or down south, or from wherever it is that I actually come. It doesn't even occur to me, until later that the Italian father that was asking what the name of the cotton-topped Tamarins didn't flinch when I gestured to the name placard, moving to the side to show him it. That must have been strange, speaking Italian on the street probably doesn't have the same expected rate of eavesdropping interlopers as Spanish, I would imagine, but there I was, listening in on other people's lives.
I like the zoo. I'll admit it, though some part of me, some deep down revolutionary, left-wing radical part of me knows that it is little more than a hopped up jail for the animals, but I don't care right now, not too much, though I do launch into a discussion about the ethics of zoos, and animal poaching and conditions, but as little I.'s face crinkles into its look of perplexity I quickly remedy my diatribe by saying that I was sure that this zoo employed ethical practices. The animals did look happy, and what is happiness, ultimately? Getting fed regularly seems like the closest to happiness I get on a regular basis, to an animal maybe it is bliss?
When we are back in NH, after an eventless carride, listening to... I don't know if I should say this, but hell, we all know I have totally eclectic tastes, and I am only feeling self-censuring because of the book I was reading, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, that was making me laugh out loud, and that I had borrowed from one of the roommates, not sure who, but was forced to leave behind unfinished and then make a stop at Barnes and Noble and buy myself a copy in order to finish where I left off at page 209. So I was listening to Judy Collins and yes, literally welling up with nostalgic tears for an era that I never lived! and singing to Paul Simon, "me and Julio down by the schoolyard..." and I. is wailing away, "goodbye Rosie.... Queen of Corona" only she says Verona, because she has been obsessed with Romeo and Juliet ever since last summer and even made me buy a copy of Zeffirelli's version for our house, despite the fact that there is one here at my parents' house, and I'll admit, I have a soft spot for the film myself, especially, and this is where she and I differ, because I actually like the sex scene, have liked it ever since I was 13 and we watched it in my 9th grade English class, where Sara and I had those giggling fits that lasted far past the appropriate, and perhaps propitiated the only public chastisement that I received, ever, in my high school career and which amounted to a semi-sarcastic interrogation, of, "are you quite finished?" and we would sneak looks at each other, and the laughter would boil up from some unknowable source of hilarity and we would turn away in an almost anguished pain, biting lips, and squeezing bladders to keep from spurting forth in laughter. Ah, but...
I was saying. Back in NH we went out to dinner at Consuelo's, the Mexican restaurant that Martín and Marigen, friends and family of ex-lovers, and intricate relationships too numerous and complex to describe here, and Jenn, a dear, old friend, also related to this family in similarly complex ways was working, and she tells me that when I. came busting in, a few months back, she was floored because there was a miniature Ilana, in dark, straight hair, and smooth cinnamon skin, but my replica nonetheless... and I cringe because it is true, down to the histrionics and everything, and Jeff is right, I am too indulgent, but I don't know how to be any other way, and hell, if I can't be indulgent, as I am with her and with countless others, then how can I be me? But that is a topic for another day, and perhaps one for when I am back in California, with my therapist, if I still have a therapist when I get back, and I can answer all sorts of questions for myself like why I can't say no and just walk away from people I love. But there it is, a bit of stumbling block, I'll admit, but I never claimed perfection, or even self-discipline... but maybe that, too, is part of being a grown up? I think, frankly, that it is more about learning how to lie to ourselves, squelch our creativity and condemn ourselves to boring mundane lives, jobs that reek of stability and houses that ooze responsibility and I am not so sure I want to be a part of it. Nomadic isn't so bad, when it comes down to it, though I must confess, I feel tired, tired, tired, and I still don't get to go home, but rather back to Mexico, to yet another house, and I was looking at pictures of Lulú's apartment, our apartment, mine and Kik's, with a sort of nostalgia generally reserved to things long past, and not just three weeks ago...
I. didn't want to take a carriage ride in Central Park because after having a minor tantrum, albeit a self-contained, whispered one, whereby I was the bad guy because I took her to FAO Schwartz to look, but not with the specific intention to buy and she shouldn't stay because it was only going to tempt her and I wasn't going to get her anything after all, was I? So what was the point? This reverse, perverse logic sounds terribly familiar to me, and I suddenly (only now, really, that I am writing this, and thwarting another minor melt-down around going to be alone, her not me, well both of us, but in this instance, at least, I am the one who wants to go to bed alone, and she does not) realize that I operate under these same perversities and maybe, just maybe, everything really is all my fault after all. But this, too, will have to await further examination. She didn't want to take a carriage ride because she is still mourning Buddy.
Buddy is a horse that drew our carriage in Montreal exactly 5 summers ago. She has missed him ever since. Now I don't know about you, and well, certainly there are people that I have met and missed ever since our fateful encounter, but they are not horses, now are they? (though they may indeed be asses). But she deeply regrets the loss of Buddy, not that he was ever more than a rented beast of burden, but she fed him sugar cubes and when we asked, two weeks ago, in Montreal if Buddy was still around, and the man, quite kindly told us that Buddy had gone, but which I. understood immediately to mean that he was DEAD, she was morose for over a half hour, and once again, her loss of Buddy made her never want to take another carriage ride in her life. They aren't cheap, so I really shouldn't complain, but I am a bit concerned about this obsessive compulsion to fixate on an unfixable loss with such resonating zeal. I don't know. This parenting thing is a bit stickier than originally contemplated, plus having a kid that is sharper than a whip and doesn't let go of things, which may in fact be a genetically inherited trait, is an added complication.
And so I close with no real opening, but there is a croaking that sounds a bit like "Mommmeeeee" wafting down the stairs, two hours past when it should be, and my arms, and breasts are required for a tender push into temporary oblivion. So I take my leave, for now.
It is like putting on clothing that you used to wear, years ago, and it isn't precisely that it doesn't fit, or even that it is unflattering, but just that you have forgotten how to wear it, or that it was waiting in a closet, in someone else's house, for your inevitable return. And it just doesn't feel right. I had that same experience in Manchester, driving around, it was all so familiar, like in a dream, only I had to keep turning around, and backtracking, and pulling onto side streets to take the long way around because I had forgotten which crazy lane shift I had to make in time.
I.'s visit to the hospital, however, was uncannily the same. The day we left NH, M.'s Rav4 packed to the brim with stuff, and the u-haul neatly hinged behind, she had a bit of a freak accident too, slamming her 4 year-old eyebrow into the corner of the free-standing stairway and bleeding profusely, though the ultimate injury was minor. This time there was far less blood, none, in fact, just an earring back that magically worked its way inside her earlobe, and sealed itself inside, like some medieval barbed weapon that enters smoothly, but eviscerates upon removal. The only blood came after the shot of anesthesia, the wait was much longer than it had to be, but that, I am afraid, is also par for the course when one goes to the emergency room for lesser troubles.
The rain was just another case of Murphy's law. Spectacular weather all week prior, and indeed after, but the two days we choose, I choose, let's be fair, I. had very little say in the matter and I just had to get away from my mother (who I adore, but who drives me mad. I mean, really, one is never truly allowed to grow up in their parents' eyes, and therefore is doomed upon return to eternally be treated as a child, no matter how many grey hairs, or white, in my case, they are sprouting -and there are quite a few, only from one spot, but there is an unsurmountable terror in this, I won't go into details.)
Jeff is waiting for us, and the computer-generated directions are perfect, and my execution of them is flawless, and it is still raining, but we don't mind. He lives a few blocks from Astoria park, in Queens, and we hug for a minute, and then let go, and then hug for another minute, because, in all honesty, although we read each other's blogs, we haven't actually talked since, oh God, since... has it really been that long? I feel like a terrible friend, but then, there are friendships that have weathered the storm of years and are just as comfortable picking up where the left off if it is a week, a month or a year. Jeff and I have this sort of friendship. Incidentally so do Laura and I, whose wedding was beautiful, and who made me all weepy and proud because she and Andy really are in love in that really sane way, the way that makes you think that the vows that they made, to respect one another and to accompany one another and to pick each other up when the other is down are things that aren't abstract ideas, but modes of behaving, ones that will be carried off with ease and style. I couldn't even be cynical because if two people were ever right for each other, they seem to be. But I digress, if there ever was a point to this rambling story.
So, we head for Indian food, but the place is divy and we decide against it, stop at a Morrocan café that is far over-priced, and finally settle for... a ham, egg and cheese sandwich, on a deli roll. This is NY after all. The apartment is really the first floor and basement of a large house, there are five guys living there, no more women in the house, and it is immediately apparent that a) they cleaned up because they knew we were coming, and b) it was a house inhabited by five (relatively) single guys teetering on the edge of their thirties. There were boy books by hip male writers: Murakami, Eggers et. al. There were books on gaming, and wii's (motion sensitive nintendo joysticker thingies for playing video games on a large TV), movies, movies, movies... many that I have seen, and like, but oozing with testosterone in a pleasantly familiar way. The kitchen was large and mostly empty, though in their defense they had quite an arsenal of cooking utensils and such. Not too many dishes, some weird brown sludge caked on the the stove top, but otherwise mostly clean. At closer inspection of course, and here I am ashamed of just how motherly I am, the counter top had a sort of sticky film that needed addressing, and so, when we awoke the next morning, in the spare bed in the basement, amid the multitude of musical instruments (they have a band, they have fun... makes me nostalgic for the days when I hung around houses like this, before I became... what have I become? Well, someone with matching sheets and bath towels, for examples, and a place to put musical instruments away when not in active use, for starters.) I took it upon myself to put away all dry dishes, wash up all the dirty ones in the sink, and give the stove and counter a peremptory (if not entirely thorough - there were no cleaning products readily available, or at least not obviously so) cleaning.
Andy, one of Jeff's roomates was especially warm, and good to talk to, and it made me happy to see that he is living with good people. We ate pizza and drank wine, and watched the third film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy- extended version- despite the fact that Jeff and I. and I had just been to the cinema to see Stardust based on a Neil Gaiman book that was, conveniently, available for perusal and comparison. But again, I meander through these thoughts as if they had some purpose, when in fact, there is no point.
I had wanted to share NYC with Isabella, to show her something new, something special, something that we could do together, alone, that is, just the two of us, as opposed to with the entire family, or boyfriends or husbands or what have you. My plan was destined to fail. No, not to fail, to fizzle. She whined quite a bit. Now, I must remind myself, as I reminded Jeff, this is an age of self-involvement, and no matter how smart and with it she may be, and she is - making more connections between films and actors than many of us-- she is an attention hound, unfortunately, singing "Dr. Worm" by They Might Be Giants, and mocking me when I ask her to settle by sitting in the middle of the porch in a lotus position and loudly ommmmmmming. So the grey gloomy day nixes our plans to see the Statue of liberty, but we do go, by ourselves, to the Central Park Zoo, or rather, Jeff drops us at the gate and runs an errand regarding his filming in Ohio this weekend, and I am left to feed my child a hotdog from a street vendor (we are in NY after all). There are no benches. We are on the edge of the Park, fifth avenue and 64th, at the entrance to the zoo. There are some muck covered and smiling construction workers, they sound Caribbean to me, chatting it up with a white lady in a suit, who seems to know them. I ask if I. can steal a corner of the bench, and one jumps up, obsequiously to offer us half the bench. I stand, in a dress and high heels. I have taken to dressing like a grown-up, too. I asks me why I look so "fancy" and I laugh because I don't look any more fancy than any other day, or than most other days, but these are new shoes, and oh my feet hurt, what was I thinking? But I am mistaken, they hadn't started hurting yet, not really, that was just vestigial pain from the wearing of other new shoes a few days prior at the wedding. Nothing hurts, nothing much, that would be later when we walked the twenty blocks up to Times Square to go to the movies again, this time to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For now, it is I. and I, and a hot dog, and a bottle of water that I slipped in my purse before stuffing the parking ticket which was too rain-drenched to read properly, or to even know if it was for me (though it must have been, right, as it was stuck between the body and the hood of the car, but I still couldn't read it, except the part that said $115 bucks and I didn't even flinch, or get angry, and this is a change, I mean, it must be... there is something to be said for travelling alone: when things go wrong, there is no one to blame but me, and since it is always my fault, there is no point in berating myself now, publicly, wouldn't you agree?). So I say to the man, who is smiling and friendly-looking, "you can sit, we don't need that much space" and he bounces a bit, and says, "oh, no, I'm cold..." and I should just have left it at that, but I have this irritating habit of making small talk with strangers, God I am turning into my mother, and so I say, "Oh, not me, I'm hot" which, of course, is true as I just walked the five blocks from the Subway at a brisk New Yorker's pace (following Jeff, obviously. When I am left to my own devices I wander more slowly and stare up at the cornices and glass, or at the throngs of people that throb in and out of side streets and thoroughfares.). "Don't I know it!" he exclaims, and I blush because he just made me seem like I was saying that I was "hot" as in "sexy" which was the last thing on my mind at that moment and wait a minute, I thought having I. with me was supposed to shield me from passersby and their appraisal of my (dubious) feminine mystique. I manage a smirking "touché" and he laughs, and I laugh, and it is ok, because he just wanted to make me feel good, which, in the end, he did. I. and I, hand in hand, enter the zoo, and wander around. I negotiate with her, and make her speak Spanish to me, mostly because it makes me feel like I am cloaked in more anonymity than I am, and of course, half of NY speaks Spanish, but I had forgotten that, and anyway, if I am going to be a tourist, I might as well seem as if I am exotic and foreign instead of pedestrian and practically local, but just country bumpkin from up north, or down south, or from wherever it is that I actually come. It doesn't even occur to me, until later that the Italian father that was asking what the name of the cotton-topped Tamarins didn't flinch when I gestured to the name placard, moving to the side to show him it. That must have been strange, speaking Italian on the street probably doesn't have the same expected rate of eavesdropping interlopers as Spanish, I would imagine, but there I was, listening in on other people's lives.
I like the zoo. I'll admit it, though some part of me, some deep down revolutionary, left-wing radical part of me knows that it is little more than a hopped up jail for the animals, but I don't care right now, not too much, though I do launch into a discussion about the ethics of zoos, and animal poaching and conditions, but as little I.'s face crinkles into its look of perplexity I quickly remedy my diatribe by saying that I was sure that this zoo employed ethical practices. The animals did look happy, and what is happiness, ultimately? Getting fed regularly seems like the closest to happiness I get on a regular basis, to an animal maybe it is bliss?
When we are back in NH, after an eventless carride, listening to... I don't know if I should say this, but hell, we all know I have totally eclectic tastes, and I am only feeling self-censuring because of the book I was reading, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, that was making me laugh out loud, and that I had borrowed from one of the roommates, not sure who, but was forced to leave behind unfinished and then make a stop at Barnes and Noble and buy myself a copy in order to finish where I left off at page 209. So I was listening to Judy Collins and yes, literally welling up with nostalgic tears for an era that I never lived! and singing to Paul Simon, "me and Julio down by the schoolyard..." and I. is wailing away, "goodbye Rosie.... Queen of Corona" only she says Verona, because she has been obsessed with Romeo and Juliet ever since last summer and even made me buy a copy of Zeffirelli's version for our house, despite the fact that there is one here at my parents' house, and I'll admit, I have a soft spot for the film myself, especially, and this is where she and I differ, because I actually like the sex scene, have liked it ever since I was 13 and we watched it in my 9th grade English class, where Sara and I had those giggling fits that lasted far past the appropriate, and perhaps propitiated the only public chastisement that I received, ever, in my high school career and which amounted to a semi-sarcastic interrogation, of, "are you quite finished?" and we would sneak looks at each other, and the laughter would boil up from some unknowable source of hilarity and we would turn away in an almost anguished pain, biting lips, and squeezing bladders to keep from spurting forth in laughter. Ah, but...
I was saying. Back in NH we went out to dinner at Consuelo's, the Mexican restaurant that Martín and Marigen, friends and family of ex-lovers, and intricate relationships too numerous and complex to describe here, and Jenn, a dear, old friend, also related to this family in similarly complex ways was working, and she tells me that when I. came busting in, a few months back, she was floored because there was a miniature Ilana, in dark, straight hair, and smooth cinnamon skin, but my replica nonetheless... and I cringe because it is true, down to the histrionics and everything, and Jeff is right, I am too indulgent, but I don't know how to be any other way, and hell, if I can't be indulgent, as I am with her and with countless others, then how can I be me? But that is a topic for another day, and perhaps one for when I am back in California, with my therapist, if I still have a therapist when I get back, and I can answer all sorts of questions for myself like why I can't say no and just walk away from people I love. But there it is, a bit of stumbling block, I'll admit, but I never claimed perfection, or even self-discipline... but maybe that, too, is part of being a grown up? I think, frankly, that it is more about learning how to lie to ourselves, squelch our creativity and condemn ourselves to boring mundane lives, jobs that reek of stability and houses that ooze responsibility and I am not so sure I want to be a part of it. Nomadic isn't so bad, when it comes down to it, though I must confess, I feel tired, tired, tired, and I still don't get to go home, but rather back to Mexico, to yet another house, and I was looking at pictures of Lulú's apartment, our apartment, mine and Kik's, with a sort of nostalgia generally reserved to things long past, and not just three weeks ago...
I. didn't want to take a carriage ride in Central Park because after having a minor tantrum, albeit a self-contained, whispered one, whereby I was the bad guy because I took her to FAO Schwartz to look, but not with the specific intention to buy and she shouldn't stay because it was only going to tempt her and I wasn't going to get her anything after all, was I? So what was the point? This reverse, perverse logic sounds terribly familiar to me, and I suddenly (only now, really, that I am writing this, and thwarting another minor melt-down around going to be alone, her not me, well both of us, but in this instance, at least, I am the one who wants to go to bed alone, and she does not) realize that I operate under these same perversities and maybe, just maybe, everything really is all my fault after all. But this, too, will have to await further examination. She didn't want to take a carriage ride because she is still mourning Buddy.
Buddy is a horse that drew our carriage in Montreal exactly 5 summers ago. She has missed him ever since. Now I don't know about you, and well, certainly there are people that I have met and missed ever since our fateful encounter, but they are not horses, now are they? (though they may indeed be asses). But she deeply regrets the loss of Buddy, not that he was ever more than a rented beast of burden, but she fed him sugar cubes and when we asked, two weeks ago, in Montreal if Buddy was still around, and the man, quite kindly told us that Buddy had gone, but which I. understood immediately to mean that he was DEAD, she was morose for over a half hour, and once again, her loss of Buddy made her never want to take another carriage ride in her life. They aren't cheap, so I really shouldn't complain, but I am a bit concerned about this obsessive compulsion to fixate on an unfixable loss with such resonating zeal. I don't know. This parenting thing is a bit stickier than originally contemplated, plus having a kid that is sharper than a whip and doesn't let go of things, which may in fact be a genetically inherited trait, is an added complication.
And so I close with no real opening, but there is a croaking that sounds a bit like "Mommmeeeee" wafting down the stairs, two hours past when it should be, and my arms, and breasts are required for a tender push into temporary oblivion. So I take my leave, for now.
posted by ilana at 6:57 p.m.
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