We don't talk about it - none of us do. I'm sure the exception exists (it always does) but in conventional society that's few and far between. Even the sex and the city ladies left it alone, generally, based on my memory of a season's worth of shows. I have spent the last week working solely on it - finding citations and abstracts, now searching for books (and more bibliographies), starting to read articles. The curse. The blessing. And society has done its magic well enough that I can't look people in the eye when I tell them what it is I'm researching. A project about women in Nepal is what I tell them; it's not untrue, just not wholly true. I told my mother the whole truth, Ethan knows - he knew before I did - but not my father. I couldn't break that barrier. I see the articles about women in the US, how we are trained from our pre-pubescent years to keep it a secret and feel shame if anyone (especially male!) knows. Certainly things change as we age and time goes on and I am no longer held in stifling fear but I am (we all are) still secretive, within reason. Which is rather absurd. What does it really matter? On occasion when people find out I notice no real difference in their relationship to me. Ethan may tease now and again but we're like that all the time. And yet I have troubled memories: not letting the boys look through our backpacks, being mortified at sending my father to the store (why can't you go, mom?), waking up in the desert surrounded by classmates and trying not to panic. It's not that I feel like we ought to announce it, I have just recently been prodded to wonder about the 50mg elephant in the room.
I remembered on Sunday right before I went to bed, the computer off and the air conditioning purring. I woke up yesterday, determined to say something, anything, and in fact wrote a whole paragraph which is now lost. Deleted. I have never done that before - intentionally destroyed a whole piece that was essentially done. I am not sure if I should feel ashamed at my lack of courage or pleased that I could so rationally distance myself from something I had written. I find it harder and harder to let posts like that one exist, even this one is hard to be sure of. The writing is just not there - not the way I want it to be - purely busywork. My lack of enthusiasm ends up being demonstrated by my Candide-like attitude which I hate; coming from such a narcissistic writer you know that something really terrible was there. I am not sure what the solution is. Clearly I write better when I have something I very strongly wish to say, but to come up with something like that every day is a serious challenge. It is also harder than I expected, coming back into a life where my presence and attention matter to someone else at almost every moment. A life where I am needed and in companionship, not bored and lonely. I suppose that was the void I was writing for. Now that is has gone, where do I send these words?
The fan spins over my head, white tips of the blades catching and reflecting back the light from the standing-lamp that dimly illuminates the room. I can't tell by looking at it how many blades there are - strange the way our eyes, or memory, can fill in the gaps to form a continuous or sensical whole. If I blink quickly enough I can see flashes that are almost still - a human strobe light - and count five blurred blades whirling. Somehow I thought there are only four, but I suppose it's hard to know for sure with them running all the time; comparisons to restaurant fans aren't necessarily indicative of our own. I have two memories that I have had for a long, long time - twenty years or so - which in my childhood I could not and to this day I cannot discern if they are real memories or strange dreams, the closest approximators to life I have ever seen. I wonder sometimes if they are one filed mistakenly by a young brain into the other category and therefore creating the confusion. Or maybe it's just a phantom of each, like the ten fan blades I think I see right now, swirling air on the ceiling.
He used to hide around corners, sneak out into the road from behind a tree, drive along side clocking our speed. Faster, he'd say, easy doesn't mean you don't have to work. We had simple rules. Come if you didn't have a fever. Do an alternative workout if you had an injury. I spent two weeks once on stationary and mobile bike, strapped into an aqua-jogger like a fool nordic-tracking in the pool, something every day. Never walk. Ever. It takes about two weeks to really get a habit started - waking up at 545 and stretching while the sun slowly lit up our shadows on the pavement - showering in public for the first time - packing a backpack in two minutes, putting my shoes on in the car - and it takes a second to break it. I was undaunted until one workout, two years in, trying leap a chain over the road and catching my shin right where it meets the ankle. I gave up on the end of that workout, the first and only I ever stopped in until the day my lungs betrayed me and I stumbled off the track onto the grass panicked, wondering how I had turned into some sort of balloon. Consistency was key. Is key. I have wavered from this path for two weeks now, long enough to form a habit of not acting. It's a hard road to fight back on. I'd much rather go to bed, do the dishes, wake up a little later in the morning for work or go to sleep that five minutes earlier. I forget, remember when the light's off and I'm slipping into dreams. But this is my record, my waking dream; if I give it up what will I ever be able to fight for again?
The hiatus is over; apologies to anyone who will manage to finally read this. Time at home is always a whirlwind of boredom -I get nothing done and the minutes tick by until suddenly I'm packed into a car and shot out onto the airport curb. This is the first time I didn't cry at the airport (yeah, I'm a terrible softy) with sudden homesickness and remorse at my leaving home again, never quite sure when I return. That's really the hardest part - never sure when I'm coming back, always a little afraid the cat will be gone (he's not himself these days, mewling in doorways and sleeping more than ever) or something will happen to my parents. But this time Ethan was with my to haul luggage and hold my hand on the jetway and placing me in the odd paradox of leaving home to go home. Perpetually I am torn although legally my choice will soon be made and in my heart I know that here with him is right. That doesn't make it easier to walk away from twenty-three years of history though, with a mother who taught me the proper use of those sad, begging, puppy dog eyes. Don't leave, she says, Will you come back here to live? I hope so. But right now is it here that I am living - in Chicago, with my Ethan, on these pages. I won't disappear for so long again.
I am in my parents' house - have been for a week, will be for a week more. Time flows differently here, the pace of life is off somehow, my "good" hours of the day are rather reversed. Every day moves oddly in the morning as I somehow jolt myself awake and out of the claritin-induced fog that clouds my brain and then Trader Joe's with mom (every day!) and fussing with stores and paper cutters and wines. Small, mundane concerns. My life here is plain but nice - salad for dinner, popcorn and a Rumpole with daddy in the evening, several hours out shopping or cutting or walking every day with mom so I can stand the cat when I'm home. The agapanthis is blooming and the catnip spills all over the kitchen table, ignored in favor of the basil (even our cat has become gourmet in his old age). There are so many words that I can spill on this page about the past week and yet clearly I have been conspicuously absent from writing, for which I apologize to those of you who faithfully read and to myself who faithfully writes. My room gets very overheated with the computer running and in the recent ninety-plus degree weather I have been disinclined to add any amount of energy to the room since the poor three-speed fan is not quite up to the challenge of sufficiently cooling it for pleasant sleep. My silent, private time is spent instead with a book or the newspaper or looking at the greening stone tiles in the backyard, the shadows shifting gently over it as branches catch the breeze.
I feel remarkably unrushed despite realizing that I will end up in a vague panic within a few hours when I admit to myself that I do, in fact, have too much to do in too little time. This is what plane flights do to me. I think part of my current relaxation is based on my satisfaction with what I have accomplished in the last few days - the wedding plans are more and more done and with luck after one more cake tasting and a florist's email I will have all deposits paid and vendors reserved. Nothing left but picking wine and tablecloths and at this point I hardly care. What is harder for me to believe (and does make me feel rushed) is that my big sister is finally grown up and getting married herself. I look at this phenomenon and still can hardly believe it. My sister who never dated much, has such high standards, always seemed so reserved and shy about relationships now ready to embark upon married life and snuggle unashamedly in the kitchen when we're all making dinner. I marvel at the ability of being in love to change us, not consciously, but rather like erosion and the Grand Canyon on a slightly shorter timeline. It makes me wistful for our younger youths and throws into stark relief what I am about to do myself. It looks wonderful.
