The Mother
I am,
today, writing this in the middle of a snow storm. The weather is beautiful,
very Anna Karenina, and I would love it even more, was I able to go witness the
wind and the cold firsthand. Alas, I have been taken ill. So in I must stay.
I, my fine
fellows, am experiencing the finest of all headaches, the crème de la crème of
the headache world, the mother, if you will. It has been going on for three days now. And
not just that, but if you saw me, you would be horrified to find me with
eyelids hanging on top of my eyes as if someone had just kicked the shit out of
me. I look like Robert De Niro in The Raging Bull, without the black and blue, because
my eyelids are red, not black. But otherwise the similarity is uncanny. Robert
De Niro whose brain is about to explode through his nose and eyes.
And not
just that, but to add insult to injury, I am having one of those mornings. For
starters, the migraine medicine the doctor prescribed is, so far, not working
at all (the shark is not working). Yes, yes, I am experiencing a crowded
feeling inside my head, blurred vision, sensitivity to light and loud noises,
and yes, I am feeling Dizzy Miss Lizzie. But he don’t know. It ain’t easy being
me.
I cut my
tongue, drawing blood, licking the lid of a soygurt jar. Waiting for the coffee
to brew, I tried to reorganize the cookbooks, managing to destroy the fengshui
of the kitchen table completely. Right now, the cookbooks are lying all around
the kitchen surfaces, along with the tea cosy, some coasters, prescription
pills and otherwise, notices from the housing cooperative, notebooks, rubber bands,
onions and the sunflower seed container. I burnt my scrambled eggs, because I left
the stove unattended, managing to burn them to a crisp. To a crisp, because while the eggs were scrambling, assumedly by
themselves on the burner, I had a marvelous idea as I was making the bed to go
through my nightstand book pile while I was near it, to dust the book jackets
some, and see if the pile needed some updating. The only thing missing from
this morning is getting my tongue stuck on a frozen swing chain.
What is wrong
with me? The kitchen is a mess. It looks as if Niles, Frasier’s accident-prone
brother, was preparing for a date there.
And not
just the kitchen. As I have described in earlier stories, I have been hauling crap
from my childhood home to my current one, toys and clothes and books and what
have you, because my parents are finally doing the unthinkable and selling the
place. The living room is so full of boxes one can barely get through to the
balcony, which is full of clothes hanging on the rack, airing for a few days
while I try to figure out where the hell I am supposed to find room for more clothes. My home has turned into a
giant storage space. I find it hard to just open my eyes in the morning to
greet the ungodliness (considering that cleanliness is godliness) that is my house right now. Also, for some reason, I
am having difficulty getting started in tidying up the place. Just look at what
I am doing right now to shirk from starting! I, who love a clean and organized home.
Association bit: as I wrote that sentence, the old Tom Jones track I, Who Have Nothing appeared in my head.
It truly and sincerely does not apply here.
I am
taking the medicine with a huge pinch of salt. I used to be a walking drug
store for a while there, a few years back, when I was having difficulty
sleeping – the mother of all difficulties, if you ask me – which lead to major
depression which lead to heartburn and packing some extra meat and general
numbness, and before I knew it, I was eating pills for the side effects of the
other pills on top of pills on top of pills.
I kicked
everything I was eating last spring. I ain’t going back. So, the idea of having
developed a juicy migraine right now is not exactly what I want to hear. The
doctor, for once, was really nice to me, and had a sense of humor, a character
trait I find extremely rare, if not non-existent, in doctors in general, so I
went ahead and got the prescription from a drug store. But I hate eating them.
I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it.
I think my
brain is what is being scrambled right now. I feel sad. I am having a child’s
reaction to losing my beloved Old Lady. The village was my Stars Hollow, my holy
place, my retreat from the horrors of the world, my place to find my center
again when I lost it. I know I could always go visit the neighborhood, but
right now that feels like blasphemy. Right now I feel like I will never go
back, I can’t, I will break apart if I see the church and the general store and
the woods and my hiking trails without owning them anymore. Without belonging
to those trees and those landscapes the way I always have until now.
The sudden
need to further the mess in my house seems to be connected to this other thing
that is bothering me. As if I was just deconstructing everything else, too, for
the hell of it, since I am being forced to deconstruct something huge,
something unspeakable and ancient and fundamental, the world, or time, or the
gods, or my fairy godmother, until now, have left alone. And I know the
headache and the swelling connects to what is happening now, too.
Perhaps I
have this week become the schoolbook example of what crying too much will do to
you. At least it is looking to me, as I study my swollen forehead and lids in
the mirror, that my tear ducts have finally clogged.
The
falling snow is slowly covering the ground. The pine trees and firs visible in
the window from where I am sitting are dressing up in a white blanket. It is so
beautiful. So this is my view from now on, my one view. Not the intertwined birches.
That is the way to do it, isn’t it? I am struggling to get a grip. Just look at
this godawful mess. Let’s get cracking, why don’t we. I guess the pine has
always been my favorite of all the trees, anyway.
I eat the
burnt scrambled eggs and take the migraine pill like the good girl that I am,
knowing in my heart of hearts that it won’t work, the problem is in my head,
but not the way the doctor thinks. I eat the soygurt with a sore tongue.
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