Every 2 Seconds
Today I am grateful for:
- Being healthy
- My car
- My home
- My food
- My recipes and meal prep
- Water
- Hydration
- Having the most beautiful and strongest long natural nails I've ever had in my life (thanks biotin vitamin!)
- Modern medicine
- Understanding
- Kindness
- Being wrong
- Self-talk
- Self-kindness
- This month is the two year anniversary of me starting my blog.
- Music
- Rhythm
- The conscious choice to allow. Someone. Something. A feeling. A blessing. A gift. A moment.
Thank you, stop sign.
Thank you, Clarissa.
Thank you, Gina.
Thank you, God, for letting me say goodbye with my best friend by my side.
Thank you for all of these amazing people.
Thank you, SLH.
And I cried
And they told me, "Wow, you're really taking this hard."
And I wore all black to school that day.
A black hoodie and black sweatpants.
I don't really know how I got dressed. I don't remember much. All I remember was crying. Was how blurred the world looked when constant tears were streaming down my face. It finally happened. The thing I spent so many years terrified of as a child sitting on the sofa home alone. I would sit there and cry. Thinking about all the terrible things that might be happening to my parents. To my family. To my mother. She wasn't home and I didn't really understand why. All I knew was time. Passing. And her not being there. And I thought and I thought and I thought and I worried and I wondered and because I knew now that someone could leave this Earth and never come back - I wondered when that would be for my mother as I waited for her to get home. My parents never abandoned me. They never left me at a store or in a dumpster or on a door step (though they threatened to). But when you're a child who can't process your entire experience - abandonment doesn't always need to look a certain way to have the same effect.
I knew that someone could die. And never come back. And that terrified me.
Finally, it happened. Finally, my fears had come true and it was unlike anything I could imagine. "She died in her sleep." "It was expected." "It was a long time coming," they said. "It was peaceful," they comforted. But there weren't enough Kleenex. My sleeves were soaked. I was a river of snot and a fountain of mucus. Nobody told me how ugly this would be. Nobody told me how my chest would be sore. Nobody told me that no one else would cry. That no one else would cry like I did. That I would feel so utterly alone despite being surrounded by other people in that church. Nobody told me how beautiful the church would be. How colorful. Why is it so colorful? Why is it so bright? Why should this room look so happy? And they asked if I wanted to still play that night of the funeral. But playing was all I knew how to do. I didn't want to be taken away from my routine. I needed it. I needed to step on that court. And play. I needed to wear that all black uniform and focus on form and foundational movements. I needed to show up to that funeral with something. And if it was a 2nd place medal - then that was enough. I didn't need to win. I just needed to play. I needed to leave my unexpressionable emotions forever pressurized into the creases of that volleyball. I needed to feel the net between my fingers like hers once were. I needed to talk to my team the way she did only a few days before. I needed to feel alive. Because she was not. I needed to breathe hard. I needed to release. I needed to play. And that night I had promised her that I would bring her pictures, for her wall. I understood, then, how important all those school portraits were to her. For her, those silly Lifetouch backgrounds were life forces. They were closeness. They were a portal into our worlds as grandchildren. They were her and us together forever. Whenever. They were time capsules of our growth. Of our age. Of our hope. Of the moments she hoped to hold onto forever. Of the children she wished she could hold forever. That she could no longer carry. That she never was able to carry because of her back. That she could only cook for or bake for or offer $1.07 for a Dollar Tree figurine that impossibly impersonated the ancient relics she kept in her glass cabinets. Her vinyl machine that took up half the living room, with class. Her cane with tennis balls and her walker. Her impossibly slow speed of moving through a grocery store. I can't imagine. Being so tall. Being so mobile. And being reduced to a snail's pace and the visibility of a teenager sobbing over her grandmother at her funeral. It must have been so hard. So difficult. But she was alive. Then. And that was enough. We were enough. For her. And she wasn't perfect. But who is? And I cried. And I cried for her bundt cakes. And her scrambled eggs. And her chef salt and pepper shakers. And her oven. And the sound of cooking echoing through her small kitchen. And her round table. And the sound of her refrigerator door opening and the Koolaid in the pitcher and the ice pops in the freezer and their sweet juiciness on a hot Texas summer day and the way her garage was carpeted and the dogs she had and the plants - oh, god, the plants - the roses, the grass, the bushes, the little lions on top of her gates, the pink hula hoop she would let me play with, the driveway that was like a red carpet leading from the road to her house that was somehow able to host our entire family's parade of cars. Her pants with the elastic waist that she wore over her tummy. Her whiskers on her eyebrows. Her thick glasses before her cataracts surgery. Her library of stale foods in her pantry. The way her guest bedroom smelled of moth balls and disuse. Those little red teddy bear lego-like toys in the white spooky ghost bucket. The mass of her television. The plush of her carpet that sometimes had ants crawling through it like a plush savannah. The weight of her air conditioning unit. The comfort and smell of her floor heater that somehow didn't burn the house down. The pink tile bathroom and the green toilet and the little heater in the wall that kept your butt from freezing in the middle of winter and the chair in her shower that I never understood and the green desk lamp and the way she kept the desk how I imagined she must have kept it since her husbands divorce and passing. I don't know. But I imagine. I imagine it didn't change much. I imagine she hated him but she also loved him and she hated herself for loving him and for hating him. I imagine her only purpose in her mind was giving. That was all she thought she could do so she did her best to do it as best as she could. Serving. Helping. Comforting. Nourishing. Clothing. However she knew how to. Which may not have been how you expected. And her watermelon candies. Always something sweet. And her screen door. And her porch that she later fell on. Who found her? How did they know? How long did she have to wait? How long did she have to lay there alone? In so much more emotional pain than physical? Was she embarrassed? Wash she ashamed? Was she scared? Did she cry? Was she taken back to her childhood when she first fell down the stairs? When she first realized he wasn't able to keep her safe from himself? When she first saw him drunk? When did they fall in love? How did she survive all those years alone?
And I cried.