The other day I woke up and started my morning by making coffee. Like I do everyday. I went up to the pot of coffee and looked at it, taking out the pot to pour in my little cup. And I noticed that there was a sticker on the pot that had been there since I bought it over a year ago. And I was stunned. I had been making coffee with this machine, together, me and it, every morning and had never seen that sticker. I peeled it off and stood there, cup in hand, thinking about all the things in my life that have worked that way. There is a long list of things that I haven’t seen until I saw them. But once it’s in front of your eyes, it’s hard to deny.
Sometimes I have to wonder if I have been living in reality. Sometimes my blindness, even though I am reminded of it regularly, still surprises me. If our thoughts make our reality, what’s reality if you aren’t really paying attention to anything that’s actually happening? I think of the many relationships that once meant the world to me and are now a thing of the past. I think of the story I told myself for so many years about who I was and where I came from and how that story got burned up in front of me like a flaming cross on the front lawn. Yes, it was that violent. And I think of the things that are yet to come. The stickers that I haven’t even noticed yet. The years that will come and the stories that will be revealed as false or not quite what I thought they were.
And in the sadness of this, I also think about the memories and the people that have shaped me. And I wonder if those times that made me smile and feel like myself most are what I spend my time focusing on. Maybe the only thing. It hurts to let go of those moments when I felt seen. To know that they are gone for good. And maybe I am no different from anyone else that spends time lingering over the past so much that the present doesn’t have any space to expand or grow.
June is a month of anniversaries for me. Some are good, beautiful. Some sad. 13 years ago the first person to handle me with gentle, loving kindness shuffled off the mortal coil. She was a friend of great, grand proportions. And I feel ashamed when I think that maybe her memory has made more of what we had together. And I can’t help but wonder if we would still be friends today. I’m bad at keeping in touch and that was always hard for her to handle. When she scooped me up, I was so young. We held hands through so much. We laughed and cried, talked about boys, and made plans for the future in our small town. We started our adult years still in touch, still talking. And who she thought I was meant the world to me. She made me mixed tapes, she answered the phone and talked for hours, she wrote me cards and letters. We loved each other in the way two high school girls do, fiercely and innocently. Her words and love opened doors for me and for that I remember her often with so much affection. And in my moments of blindness and my moments of shifting shadows, I wish she was still here to make it better. Because my memory of her is that she always did.
Maybe because I grew up with so much insecurity, with so many things unknown and unsaid, with so much change and flux, I grasp and pray and struggle to hold on to things. I want a family so badly, a family that will hold me no matter what, that I have often-too often- forced bystanders into this role. Spend one night singing Patty Griffin with me in the fog and you are my sister, irregardless of whether you really want to be or not. Drink in Irish Bars with me and you are my cousin, the one I screamed with in the pool growing up, whether you like it or not. Work next to me day after day and you are my mother, the one I need so much, even if you have your own life and kids.
My job doesn’t help this either. The folks that make it through, the ones that fight with grace and kindness no matter how it ends, are the ones with family. There is a patient who loves to walk laps on the floor, but she is never alone. She is my age and her father walks next to her, accompanying her, on every lap. There are sisters who raise money and get every person they know to join the bone marrow registry. There are cousins who show up and make even the doctors laugh. There are mothers who would rather sleep in the waiting room then leave the hospital where their son is. This commitment, this love, this connection, is not something I have. And I miss it. Deeply. Completely. Even if I don’t really know what it is.
My family has done the best they could with what they had. And I’m not angry anymore about the things that have shown me what they are. And what I am. But once you see the truth, once you see the sticker, you can’t lie to yourself anymore. And what is left is the sadness, the loss of the story that made the world seem less lonely, less scary. And I can’t help but wonder who would show up for me if I was in that bed. I miss the time, not so long ago, when I was sure that I had a long list. I don’t. Not really. Too many things have happened over the last 5 years that have forced me to see the sticker and peel that sucker off.
On nights like tonight, on months like June, when anniversaries and questions are the only thing that fill an empty night, these are the things I think about. And I am grateful to have a little, foolish blog to share how I feel. Even if just for a minute. So thanks for reading. Thanks for reading. Thanks for filling up some of the holes. Wanna sign up to be my cousin? Just let me know. There are a lot of open spaces on the list.
Hey Beca- I’ll be your cousin! You have probably already screamed at me in a pool, so that is checked off the list.
You got it! You are on the top of my list. We have definitely screamed together in pools