Rain
It's Sunday evening as I write this. The rain is falling in the dark and pattering against the trees, empty of their leaves. The rain provides a soothing background to my whirring thoughts. It's a soft rumble. The sound fills me with a desire to put on soft, cozy clothing and cry alongside it. My crying and the rain together like an om. I don't know why I feel like crying, but I'm blaming it on this afternoon's haircut. I could feel parts of myself drop on the floor as the hairdresser chopped at my head. The cut is not bad. It's a blunt bob. But something loosened sitting there in her chair. Screwy.
Last night, I heard my teenager speaking with another teenager. "I'm screwed up over inflation, man. I'm really scared of what it will be like when we are twenty. How will we afford anything? I've got a crooked plan, though. We should buy a bunch of bottled water now. By then, it will be like five dollars a bottle." From my secret perch in the room above them, I wondered if they knew they should invest in water, not plastic bottles of water, or maybe? Earlier in the day, I communicated with our zoning committee about our hamlet's water scarcity. It's a terrifying issue that seems so big that it's easier to throw hands in the air and say, "Well, a solution is going to cost the town so much money, and we don't have any money." Everyone nods solemnly, too, as if that's the answer. Meaning no solution is the answer.
I'm flummoxed by the daily murders in Gaza. No one believes genocide is a solution, do they?
"What do you want this year for the holidays? Have you done your holiday shopping? Are you doing anything special for the holidays?"
"I want all humans to have an inalienable right to live on earth where they want to live.I still need to do my holiday shopping. I want gift-giving to be something other than something that requires shopping. I am visiting family this holiday, which is an unusual privilege these days."
My mother used to say, "I never grew up. I feel like a thirteen-year-old." Hearing this, I would feel resentful. It felt like an announcement that aimed to procure sympathy from us, her children when we needed her to be our parent. She needed a parent in those moments.
Tonight, I heard myself saying to myself, "I feel like a child," which meant I had big feelings. I wanted to be held and told, "Everything will be ok." Where do parents go to be held? We have similar feelings as children, so we name them childish, which may be better named as human feelings.
Apologies for this Sunday diatribe. Apologizing is something we do when we have big feelings.
A few weeks ago, I unexpectedly found myself at Vassar Medical at 6:30am. The night before, we had driven to the doctor due to a series of unusual headaches that surrounded a bump on the back of my child's skull. The doctor ordered an ultrasound to rule out any "extraordinary" possibility. No one used words like cancer. That morning, my son didn't want to get the scans. He didn't want to shave any of his perfectly coiffed hair. The cheery nurse, with a nice brunette blowout, eased his anxiety by saying she should be able to get the job done with just a little gel. Afterward, my son asked if he could see the scans, and she awkwardly told us that she was not supposed to let patients see the dark matter. She said, "Try not to worry too much; the doctor will contact you in seventy-eight hours."
I left the hospital and drove home in silence. Later, I called my husband to cry secretly. For three days, I stayed hidden from friends and family, wondering if these would be the last three days I had before my life would explode in incomprehensible grief. If that were the case, I didn't want anyone near my shrapnel. Those three days were their own type of mourning. My poor, dear child.
On one of the three days, I took a short walk through the dark and musty woods and looked up to the bright sky through the branches of oak and fir. I surrendered "trying" (whatever that means), and in its place, I promised I would never surrender joy or my love of beauty. This promise felt pious but also precious. After seventy-eight hours of negating incomprehensible cruelty, we were relieved to learn our son did not have a cancerous tumor. Life will continue singing with a sunrise and setting with a celebration of shooting stars for us for now. My heart exploded then for all the mothers who learn their sons have tumors. Life is nonsense.
The rain outside is making the cold hard ground soft. Soft and tender are synonyms. Tender is the opposite of tough or hard to chew. Is rain nature's expression of her softheartedness? Sometimes. Sometimes the rain floods, destroys, and subsumes all that we know to be beautiful. Then, can there be more beauty to know? Despair says no. Softly, hope says yes.