Journal Entry: 5.25.09
It was our parting of ways at security check. The tears sneaked up on me. I fought them fearing that I would remind my brother of our mother, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“I love you,” I hugged him, clenched fists wrapped around his back. “I love who you are.”
Fumbling through baggage check, keys, a jacket, zip-lock of toiletries, neatly ripping shoes off. Alone. No more sister to play. Now I travel solo, longing to feel the swing of my brother’s long arms brushing at my side, showing me his Boston pace of life, mid-conversation, pointing.
Lunch: Pan-Asian cuisine on a Styrofoam plate, a flat Coke to sip. My table amid the cluster of the grand eating area where everything echoes inside a flurry of dialects. Hearing conversations, the tilt of a head, the jingle of a phone.
Aboard flight 1279. A window seat. The sensation of my brother’s reaching for me still fresh. The 60s age flight attendant wipes away her grey bangs, demonstrating exits and flotation devices with a weak smile. I am glad to hear mutual southern accents which will fly with me into Charlotte, and then eventually, on to Savannah, where an empty house, which wears a FOR SALE sign, waits for me.
I lift off, wondering if my brother watches me from his loft where he can see every mode of transportation leaving and entering the city, every beginning and every end.
“Goodbye,” I say to the patch of window behind my left shoulder which looks out upon my last view of the Boston sky line. I turn as far left as I can so the girl wearing dangly earrings seated beside me can’t make guesses about the reason for my tears. I am not leaving behind a love affair or seeing someone off to war. I am just sorry that my time with my brother is over; my little brother, no longer little, but a man; an architect who holds our memories of a complicated, younger time mutually in his hands.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
For Sale
draft in progress
“Hello,” I whisper to the walls, cupping my knees to my chest with a small sense of embarrassment that I am speaking to an empty house.
I am sitting in the middle of a room of the house that I no longer live in, here because I catch a flight tomorrow morning to visit my brother in Boston, and I needed a place to stay overnight. For $1,400 a month in mortgage payments until it sells, I get to visit Savannah and sleep on the last piece of furniture we have in the house – a piece left intentionally so that my husband and I can return to it anytime we like, and so that I can occasionally spend the night. It is like a very sophisticated type of camping.
I stare up at the old ceiling, gently rocking, seated Indian-style, and ignoring the discomfort of my backside bones jutting into the unforgiving wood floor of the room where I napped for survival, and where we conceived our daughter, then the room where I later nursed her, crying out in howls from the pain of her suckling. A room with soft colors, magnolia flowers in a frozen dance, framed on the wall, soft lamp-light singing a warm hum; the room where we spewed sickness and laughter; questioned movies with complicated plot-lines from our queen-size bed. The room I fought most of my depression, which lived there for four years with us, and too, lives with me now in our new home.
So strange to be here now, to walk the floors of this house we prayed to buy, and now pray to sell.
I hear the city sounds outside, the jagged harmonies of living I have left behind, traded off for another life where the squeals of villainous car stereos have been replaced by songs of pixie birds who build nests in unexpected places.
Ghosts always inhabit the homes we used to love. I sit here now, hearing Anna’s phantom cries releasing from her small blue room to the right, like a sound effect for a stage play, and the scene has ended, and all has gone dark.
“Hello,” I whisper to the walls, cupping my knees to my chest with a small sense of embarrassment that I am speaking to an empty house.
I am sitting in the middle of a room of the house that I no longer live in, here because I catch a flight tomorrow morning to visit my brother in Boston, and I needed a place to stay overnight. For $1,400 a month in mortgage payments until it sells, I get to visit Savannah and sleep on the last piece of furniture we have in the house – a piece left intentionally so that my husband and I can return to it anytime we like, and so that I can occasionally spend the night. It is like a very sophisticated type of camping.
I stare up at the old ceiling, gently rocking, seated Indian-style, and ignoring the discomfort of my backside bones jutting into the unforgiving wood floor of the room where I napped for survival, and where we conceived our daughter, then the room where I later nursed her, crying out in howls from the pain of her suckling. A room with soft colors, magnolia flowers in a frozen dance, framed on the wall, soft lamp-light singing a warm hum; the room where we spewed sickness and laughter; questioned movies with complicated plot-lines from our queen-size bed. The room I fought most of my depression, which lived there for four years with us, and too, lives with me now in our new home.
So strange to be here now, to walk the floors of this house we prayed to buy, and now pray to sell.
I hear the city sounds outside, the jagged harmonies of living I have left behind, traded off for another life where the squeals of villainous car stereos have been replaced by songs of pixie birds who build nests in unexpected places.
Ghosts always inhabit the homes we used to love. I sit here now, hearing Anna’s phantom cries releasing from her small blue room to the right, like a sound effect for a stage play, and the scene has ended, and all has gone dark.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Love & Theraflu
Draft 1 - in progress
It all started over flowers and lemon flavored Theraflu. I think I realized I really loved him through the haze of a dizzying cough suppressant. We had first met at a housewarming party hosted by a friend who said I needed to get out more. An overworked middle school teacher, I dragged myself from my Sunday afternoon nap to attend her soire, hair in no particular style, make-up half applied, showing up with Sunday sleep still in my eyes.
“I’m Jim,” he said from across a table that was too small for the five of us who crammed our chairs around it.
“I’m Donna. Nice to meet you.”
He worked for a college and wanted to know if I would be interested in teaching adjunct English courses. Our new friendship was a professional one. No promises. No disappointments. He was courting a few girls he had met since he had moved to Savannah; I was wearing garlic around my neck to ward off relationships after the latest one I was recovering from. Life as a middle school English teacher was exhausting. The students drained every morsel of energy I had, leaving weekends for only sleep, grading papers, and couch recovery.
The last relationship was a turning point for me. I had reached age 29 and while on a trip with him to the U.S. Virgin Islands, I leaned over a railing that overlooked the most beautiful azure island waters and asked God that if there was no one right for me in this world, to please simply give me the ability to accept it and live a good life.
I received an email while in St. Thomas. “It’s Jim. Just wanted to say hello and see if you’d like to get together sometime.” I decided not to respond until I returned home again. My head was muddled as I re-traced my prayer.
I’ve learned there’s nothing like swearing off boyfriends to assist you in finding the right guy.
Once I let go of expectation of men and decided that it would be enough for me to simply get hired by this guy to teach for his college, it all became easy. On our first “pseudo” date with a group of friends, I fell on my face while trying to crawl over the picket fence that surrounded a Tybee Island lighthouse. I pretended the fall felt fabulous and nursed my embarrassment into the next morning.
“You fell in front of him?!” the math teacher across the hall cackled.
“Ok, I know. He thinks I’m a complete buffoon!” I squealed in a mix of laughter and horror.
“No, I think you’ll marry him.”
Evidently my fall only endeared him to me. On our first official date he came to my house and brought over fried seafood to-go from my favorite restaurant. After dinner, we went outside where he played Frisbee with my dog, and he belted me in the eye with an overzealous toss.
“What the heck happened to you?” Delores gasped the next day from her post awaiting the morning bell at the sight of my eye.
“The guy, I saw him again. He accidentally nailed me with the Frisbee.”
She folded her arms and smirked at me. “You are definitely going to marry him.”
******
“Just lift your head. Now sip.”
The flowers he’d brought over sat on the table, and the Theraflu steamed
It all started over flowers and lemon flavored Theraflu. I think I realized I really loved him through the haze of a dizzying cough suppressant. We had first met at a housewarming party hosted by a friend who said I needed to get out more. An overworked middle school teacher, I dragged myself from my Sunday afternoon nap to attend her soire, hair in no particular style, make-up half applied, showing up with Sunday sleep still in my eyes.
“I’m Jim,” he said from across a table that was too small for the five of us who crammed our chairs around it.
“I’m Donna. Nice to meet you.”
He worked for a college and wanted to know if I would be interested in teaching adjunct English courses. Our new friendship was a professional one. No promises. No disappointments. He was courting a few girls he had met since he had moved to Savannah; I was wearing garlic around my neck to ward off relationships after the latest one I was recovering from. Life as a middle school English teacher was exhausting. The students drained every morsel of energy I had, leaving weekends for only sleep, grading papers, and couch recovery.
The last relationship was a turning point for me. I had reached age 29 and while on a trip with him to the U.S. Virgin Islands, I leaned over a railing that overlooked the most beautiful azure island waters and asked God that if there was no one right for me in this world, to please simply give me the ability to accept it and live a good life.
I received an email while in St. Thomas. “It’s Jim. Just wanted to say hello and see if you’d like to get together sometime.” I decided not to respond until I returned home again. My head was muddled as I re-traced my prayer.
I’ve learned there’s nothing like swearing off boyfriends to assist you in finding the right guy.
Once I let go of expectation of men and decided that it would be enough for me to simply get hired by this guy to teach for his college, it all became easy. On our first “pseudo” date with a group of friends, I fell on my face while trying to crawl over the picket fence that surrounded a Tybee Island lighthouse. I pretended the fall felt fabulous and nursed my embarrassment into the next morning.
“You fell in front of him?!” the math teacher across the hall cackled.
“Ok, I know. He thinks I’m a complete buffoon!” I squealed in a mix of laughter and horror.
“No, I think you’ll marry him.”
Evidently my fall only endeared him to me. On our first official date he came to my house and brought over fried seafood to-go from my favorite restaurant. After dinner, we went outside where he played Frisbee with my dog, and he belted me in the eye with an overzealous toss.
“What the heck happened to you?” Delores gasped the next day from her post awaiting the morning bell at the sight of my eye.
“The guy, I saw him again. He accidentally nailed me with the Frisbee.”
She folded her arms and smirked at me. “You are definitely going to marry him.”
******
“Just lift your head. Now sip.”
The flowers he’d brought over sat on the table, and the Theraflu steamed
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