I don’t need a mnemonic device to remember you
You’re literally etched into the stone of my being
I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried
And believe me, I have, with all my might
Tried. To. Forget. You.
No priest could exorcise you from my soul
Nor surgeon excise you from my spirit
We are inextricably linked, now, forever
I have learned to grow around you
Like a tree around a stone.
“Oh no, I must insist you that you sit down and let me do it,” she said to no one in particular as she began to scrape the remnants of her Stouffer’s lasagna microwave dinner from its plastic container into the garbage can, shaking her head in playful admiration at the gallantry of the imaginary man who often joined her for dinner.
Well, it happened.
I thought I published yesterday’s post, but I just saw that I did not.
There is a part of me devastated by this error.
I call this part of me “Perfectionista.”
If I am not vigilant, she drives me. She wants to get things right. She wants to be the best at whatever she does, all the time. To be seen as the best. Perfect.
She hates making mistakes.
So breaking my daily posting streak of many months? Not going over well with her.
I try to reason with her. Technically, I did write it yesterday, and though clearly I messed up and only thought I published it, I created it yesterday. And after all, the point of me doing it daily is so that I do at least one creative act daily to stay connected to my creativity. That’s it.
So cool. I did that. Yay me!
But that part of me, Perfectionista, she wants more. And what she wants has to do with what she thinks others think of her.
And she is loud.
She creates suffering for me. She is going to incessantly remind me of this flaw, trying to create a very unsettled feeling that will saturate my system.
“You blew it,” she says.
Hers is a world of extremes, of black and white thinking, of a self-generated pressure to meet somewhat randomly selected standards and performance deadlines and levels or else…
She lives in world with an almost life and death internal pressure to seem perfect to others.
I cannot live from her world view. It’s too exhausting, too exacting. And empty.
I. Just. Can’t.
My world? I try to simplify these days. What a waste of precious time, worrying what others will think about me missing a randomly-decided goal.
More and more, it’s about doing my best on any given day and letting that be more than enough.
Don’t get me wrong: I still strive to be “the best.”
The best I can be on any given day.
As for what others think of that? No longer my business, thank you very much.
Lay down next to me
On a bed of pine needles
Underneath a silversmith moon
Let me tend to your wounds
Take you into my body
Gonna wrap you into a cocoon
Of warm skin and breath
Pressed breasts and lips
Leave our selves, become one in our spoon
And with one long last look after him as he left the diner, Mary Johnson put the leftover change in the till and then shook her head, bewildered, once again, at the ever-baffling behaviors of the human race.
Sign me up to worship you
I’m your biggest fan
Enroll me in the School of You
Let me be your Best Man
I’ll get to know your every move
You’ll never be alone
Know you better than you know yourself
Be with you to the gravestone
She held her breath and waited
Looking for a permit to be who she really was
For someone to say, OK, now you can be you
It never occurred to her it was her choice
Until it was almost too late
She released her breath and stepped forward
Into the beauty of the unknown
And went to see who she would find inside
I grew up in a household where football reigned supreme.
My family, it is said, bleeds burnt orange blood – the color of the University of Texas Longhorns.
(All but me, that is. I was the only one of my family (immediate and beyond) to NOT got to UT.)
Games ruled our lives. I am not kidding. A few points of proof:
My Dad long-referenced the day of my birth as being “a dark day, the day the Longhorns lost to Oklahoma” in some bowl or other.
My grandmother’s funeral: afterwards, all retired to my grandfather’s house, and yes, a UT game was watched.
Everyone had a plethora of UT clothing and hats, and other paraphernalia, all of which came out at game time.
Social and family events revolved around annual season tickets.
I never got “it.” I mean, I went to games growing up. I was in Texas, after all, and so football was enmeshed into our social culture. I was on the pep team, and we faithfully baked cakes and toilet-papered the houses of the football team members before every game. (But this, I would argue, was merely an excuse to try to get myself noticed by one of the cute players — it had zero to do with being a real fan of the game.)
I hated the TV being on for those hours, and the loud yelling at the screen. It felt like noise pollution to my introvert ears.
Looking back, it is no accident that I went to a college that had no football team and then to a university known for its tennis team. I wanted no more to do with football and happily moved out of Texas and away from the Longhorn stampede that I had been running from my whole life.
Fast-forward decades. I meet and marry an Irish American man. Once again, it seems to be no accident. He had no idea what American football They have a whole other game over there that they call football! I’ve ensured my escape from the drone of football on the TV and yelled expletives during games.
It is not that I do not enjoy professional sports. I do. I love an occasional baseball, basketball, even football game IN PERSON. But on TV? Nah.
Then it happened. Somehow, in getting to know my father, my husband and I were invited along to a Longhorn game. He started being curious about the sport and the team and I suppose it was an easy subject for him to broach with any member of my family.
But this interest, which at first seemed harmless and sort of sweet (and smart,) in time ballooned into a full-fledged passion.
His interest in football also turned into an interest in all American sports. And not just interest. He really loves them.
The TV now usually has some game or another (or those incessant hosts talking about games or players) on most of the time.
At first, this really disturbed me. I mean, it felt like I was right back at my childhood home again, trapped, held hostage to the sports on the TV and those who just had to watch them.
But I soon realized that my husband works from home a lot and likes to have it on in the background. He really enjoys it. Life is too short not to do those things that give one pleasure, right? And so I have learned to let it go.
I am grateful for a second TV. I am grateful for earplugs. I am grateful for earphones and music and podcasts and audiobooks. They are my friends.
And on big game days, like today, the Super Bowl, I really give in and even join him to watch. I may be looking at my email a lot, or knitting, but I sit with him, because, well, he likes me there sometimes.
And that, I can do. It is the little things, after all.
“I really sympathize with you,” she said to no one in particular, the sarcasm dripping almost as low as the unlit Virginia Slims that teeter-tottered off her crimson-painted lips, as she scooped up the three cents’ change meant as her tip from the couple who’d sat at one of her best window tables for the better part of the evening, drinking top shelf gin martinis, holding out until the owner had to flicker the lights to get them to rouse themselves.
She’d expected that they’d leave a decent tip for tying up her table, but alas, the man had mumbled something lame about having thought he’d had more cash on him before lamely leaving $40 for the $39.97 bill.
With a shake of her head, she threw the pennies into the penny cup by the register and went out back to light her cigarette and further contemplate mankind.
This life is
Such a mystery
I’m puzzled at every twist
A Rubic’s Cube
I’ll never solve
My answers, always miss
Beyond the Skinny Branches 