Sitting in my car in the parking lot, another text of revelation fired off with trembling fingers to my (so kind, exceptionally patient and understanding) partner. The realizations have been getting worse since my father passed away, but the car rides to work seem to be the only free time I have where I can just think uninterrupted so it's to be expected.
-it's always been a race to starvation in my life.
How to be the child that needs nothing, that can survive on air, that can give and give and give without fatigue and look Holy while doing so? The eucharist dissolving on my tongue is a bitter pill to swallow, but sacrifice is the highest form of love, isn't it?
So I did. Fully parentified at nine, eager and willing, changing diapers and desperately trying to keep a house in order while Mom worked late and Dad convalesced. Drying myself off with washcloths because the full size, fluffy towels were reserved for my mother, she works so hard, you wouldn't understand, making myself as useful and self-sufficient as possible, meticulously crushing my young heart into a tiny, creased ball of adult worry.
The eternal burden of being a child that was a burden, listening to late night conversations I wasn't supposed to hear, pulling the shoebox out from beneath my bed while my siblings slept and counting out the change I had saved with trembling fingers that are oh so familiar now, wondering in childish naivete whether my offering would be enough to stop the fighting.
I have spent (notably, anyway) the last five years burning myself to death, or close enough to it, to keep the family warm. My mother telling me without a hint of irony or self-awareness that I remind her of Luisa from Encanto, and all I heard was I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service. I remind her of herself, of a missionary martyred for a cause that, quite frankly, wouldn't notice if I was gone. But sacrifice is the highest form of love, and so I give.
While my father slowly died, I made sure everything was taken care of. The sink full of dishes from meals I was not present for, floors covered in dirt I didn't track in, the bathroom torn apart in the chaos of illness and overuse and the sickly tinge of pink mold to illuminate my shortcomings, as sure to inspire shame as if someone had said outright you missed a spot.
I just burned and burned and burned, and I was permitted to do so. I am still permitted to do so even after my father has passed on; it's practically expected. We swear by rote, for want of more, and the exhausted chorus rolls in my head: Leave her Johnny, leave her!
-I guess I'm just tired, I text my siblings instead of shouting I don't have enough, I am not enough, I am drowning, I am burning alive.
But even that tiny admission is a shortcoming, because when (if) they ask how they can help, anticipating some one-time task, I can't bring myself to answer you'll need to help every day. There is no simple fix for this life, no easy organization tip presented by someone with a picture-perfect living room decked out in tones of Builder Beige. I have been burning for so long I don't know what it feels like to not be required, to not be obligated and expected and only loved in the way that one would love a hammer or a pair of garden shears.
What's an extra hour or two, right? I'll go to bed exhausted and wake up just as tired, and nobody ever asked me to do it, nobody expected me to do it, and why didn't I ask for help?
Flames pouring from my eyes and mouth, ever-so-Holy with that oh-so-coveted servant's heart, the next load of laundry put in the dryer amidst my choking, ash-filled reply to every sentence issued towards my (their, our) never-ending tasks, “No worries.”
Even if I did ask for help, they'd never believe it.
There's something mean that lives here, something terrible that rails against it's cage even harder whenever I am trying.
It is wretched, slavering for the scraps that I drop without meaning to, eyes narrow and spine crooked. Sometimes I sleepwalk, let it out for strolls; we wander the neighborhood together but alone. It stalks beside me whether I release it willingly or not, always encouraging, always watching, always ready for the slip.
"I'm trying to be nice," and I know it's already pouncing, it's so tired of waiting and at this point, I'm tired of trying.
The moon has been studied ad nauseum, small children can map its craters and peaks. From the Frigid Sea to the Sea Of Clouds, humanity has seen the wonders of our lone satellite.
Mankind has touched her face, has roved pointedly across her expanse, but she was never a home, never a final stop. Always further, out to the realms beyond, Ad Astra.
She is known now, she is mundane and ordinary, tired and usual.
Humanity says oh, yeah, it's a full moon tonight huh, as if it isn't the most incredible sight you've ever seen. As if she isn't a miracle in motion, grace in orbit, the master of tides and yet more familiar than the seas she commands. Luna, our moon, once believed the only moon in the cosmos, and I believe her no less special for her familiarity.
The woodpecker is at it again, I say, but at this point I'm talking to myself.
This wretched red-capped menace has felt the need to gripe and grumble all summer about the fresh house paint, the coats upon coats of margarine-yellow that now protect its favorite spot to attack.
I would see it in the tree next to the window, eyeing the new shade of the family abode with such unveiled contempt that I was inclined to lean out and tell it to go to hell.
Unfortunately my victory was short-lived, an all too common issue with wooden-shingled houses. The avian ne'er-do-well has found a new locale, up closer to the eaves on the corner of the building.
And so it returns to its neverending quest for delicious quarry in old wood, rap-tap-tapping into the wall beside my head.
Ice cream and late night TV were two things that my grandmother ensured when we slept over. It was 'our secret', she would say, winking in a manner that promised mischief. She was a tiny woman who seemed built for hugs and gentle teasing, forever exasperating our parents with her antics.
The ice cream was VanChocStraw (her term for neapolitan), and we could stay up as late as we wanted, watching Are You Afraid Of The Dark? and promising her that we weren't scared at all.
As 'grown up' as we were, when it came time to migrate to bed she never begrudged us our nightlight. It was a tiny ceramic sheep that her own children had used, and got a bit too hot to pass today's safety standards. I still remember how the orange light played over the walls, putting to rest the scary television progams that I had indulged in earlier.
Today would be my grandmother's birthday if she were still with us, and I still call that house hers. It's since been sold and renovated, but to me it will always be hers.
Me being who I am, young, dramatic and full of panic over my first attempt at baking, let the it's okay part hit my brain and slide off like liquid on a Scotchgarded couch. All I comprehend is that I've just wasted so many precious resources (eight tablespoons of yeast, I'll be brought before the magistrate for this, do we even have a magistrate) on this project which is now collapsing in front of me and smells like Miller High Life that's been marinating in late-July sun.
My dad can sense my panic (I have never had any sort of poker face) and he just chuckles a little. To my young mind he is the grizzled and humorous Long John Silver aboard the galley of the Hispaniola, gold tooth flashing while he imparts some sage wisdom to my much less confident Jim Hawkins. "We're in an early stage, don't worry. You and I can fix it before Mom gets off work."
Scarcity was baked into my life from nearly the beginning. We never had excess yet my parents always seemed to manage to find a little extra, a little more, that reserve packet of yeast that had been sitting in the fridge for a year and a half.
There was always a way to 'fix it'.
I have made bread many times over since that first time, in a variety of locales. Every time it's a little different and every time it seems that some small thing goes wrong, but every time I am relieved that it's not as catastrophic as that first time (eight tablespoons of yeast, what was I thinking?!). I've learned from that time, even if I forget and need to be reminded, the information stays the same: I can fix it.
It will not be the prettiest loaf of bread anyone has ever seen. I have a tendency to overknead the dough and the pans I have now are a little too small for the old recipe (my great grandmother was very, very German). Still, it's hearty bread, if a little tough and lopsided, and it's something that I can make myself.
"It's okay," my partner assures me in my parents' kitchen. It's been unnaturally humid for November and the dough can sense my fear. "We can fix it."
I don't have a particularly good memory. My mind loses track of many things and information tends to slide off it far too easily. My father uses the term, 'nailing jello to a tree'.
But I remember being very young, I feel I must have been between eight and ten. Old enough to sleep in a top bunk, much to my delight.
My family rented a camper and we started out in the dark, I assume very early in the morning. Trundling along mile after mile, with myself and at least one other sibling residing happily in the sleeping space above the front seats.
(Thinking back on it now, probably wildly illegal to have us untethered in a moving vehicle. But the nineties were like the wild west.)
We drove through the day and into the night, my parents taking turns to maneuver this great fiberglass brick through ordinary traffic that seemed so extraordinary to someone like me.
The last thing I saw before sleeping was a billboard that advertised The Wonderful World Of Disney, a block that aired on ABC every Sunday night after my family got home from church. With that information firmly in my mind, I drifted off.
When I awoke, we were someplace wholly new. A different state, even! My parents must have been exhausted but I don't recall them snapping at us once for being excited that morning.
I do recall the tiny boxes of cereal that we had for breakfast (thanks brain, really hang onto that vital information), and my mother combing my hair into pigtails before our first grand excursion out to this new and incredibly muggy, southern locale.
Florida, my extremely-pale mother had told us, and I didn't quite understand the resignation in her tone at the time. There's mosquitos here.
Emlagh Beach, in the homeland, stretches for what feels like forever, nearly sans sand and instead carpeted with hundreds of smooth stones.
There is a bone-deep loneliness along the entire coast that is both hard and easy to grasp, like cupping your hands to carry cold water. The only sound is the waves and the nearby herds of sheep browsing, at least one always looking up to enjoy their ocean view. Careless words are too often carried away by the wind, as if Nature itself demands hush, be still and observe. See the tiny birds flitting through the gorse, look at these gnarled roots clinging to the soil, observe, and remember.
Farther inland, ancient calderas slumber beneath their damp viridian coats, towering sides ribbed with potato ridges that bring to mind a desperate, ravenous ingenuity. We will live!, the eternal, stubborn cry; wheeling seabirds and stone houses with caved-in roofs, tables still set as though someone was meant to return.
It doesn't feel like home, where the house is. Where the belongings belong and the dogs no longer fuss because familiar, because oh it's you!
The home: Home Address, capitalized, put on contact information sheets for decades, the memorized landline phone number and the echoes of neighbors that once were relatives that once were friends. It is and it isn't, it was and it wasn't. The Home is full of what has been, is full of no we can't, no we won't, don't throw that away, what if we need it?
But as I age, I realize that coming home is a haphazardly-pitched tent in a tiny campground, cold nights and the steam of breath in the air. Coming home is bent over a sheet of watercolor paper curling at the edges, pen in hand while a landscape is coaxed to life. Coming home is the weekend, the too-short peace, the gray cat with failing eyes and a heart full of love.
Coming home is not a place for me but a sensation, a precious gift seized only in the barest of blink-and-miss-it moments. And for myself, the greatest joy is when I get to say come in, sorry for the mess, can I get you anything?
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