It’s that sweet spot between Christmas and New Year’s and a lazy vibe lingers. Ben and Evan (who my sister has cleverly coined “Bevan” – borrowing the “Bennifer” moniker from Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck) came home and in the first hours they were here, something shifted. It was as if the house were a giant Ziploc bag that in recent years had placed Joe and me in the middle and the corners had deflated and flattened. With the Christmas swirl flying about, the corners now were puffed up, and big breezes flew through nudging awake ideas and movement. The din of noise—my mom’s old Singer sewing machine hummed as Ben mended his brother’s robe, the PlayStation games, loud and until all hours of the night, the chatter, the morning ritual of pouring boiling water into not one but two French presses, and our little cat Samantha darting in closets to hide from it all–has cut through the thick stubborn silence and shifted the bag’s contents. I hope the corners stay inflated.
After our Christmas Eve dinner, which no one lingered over, the lure of the living room TV took hold and football announcers’ voices filled the room. I stayed in the kitchen because I neither understand nor follow football, probably the reason I don’t like it. Our dishwasher has been broken for months and the dishes aren’t going to clean themselves. I remembered Christmas Eves growing up, which felt quiet and clean and dreamy, and we’d stare at the tree mesmerized, like you do when looking at a fire or the ocean. The football this year readily consumed on this most magical of nights interrupted the promise of sweet silence. Does anyone really want to sit and stare at the tree? My hand is raised. I do. Does anyone want to see who sent us a Christmas card and read what they wrote? Oh, half time is about to end? Ok, then, some other time. <sigh>
Everyone has now gone. Ben’s back home in New York and Joe and Evan are off on a golf trip, so it’s just me here. The dishwasher still doesn’t work yet I keep right on cooking and finding new ways to balance the ever-growing vertical sculpture of clean dishes drying on a rack. One glass couldn’t take any more of the crowding and there was a stunning explosion that projected flashes of chunks and shards an impressively long way. The party is over and the mantels’ garlands have crisped, but these days gave the Ziploc a good shake and its insides now are stirred. Passing Evan’s room, I can see the energy in the Christmas gifts left on the floor and bed covers strewn about. Something indeed has shifted.
Yesterday was sunny and not too cold. I had every reason to get out into it and feel it, but I’m tired and spent from these last few weeks, and with an empty house, I can hide out and rest without explanation. I did too much gearing up for this holiday.
Mel Robbins suggests we answer six questions to jar loose thoughts for the next year and ones about the one we’re nearly finished. I think I need more sleep before I will begin this thoughtful exercise which I’m excited about. When I am low on sleep, I get sad and lonely and that has happened a good bit. Even the Energizer Bunny needs new batteries sometimes, and I realize I need more quiet times.
It’s been four years of renovation and since Covid and cancer appeared, and they’re each exhausting on their own, but their combination even more so. Sometimes I feel like an inexperienced child looking for a parent who can answer the question, did all this really happen?
We are on the edge of a kitchen demo and it’s killing me that I don’t know when it’ll happen. Constant back and forth from the General Contractor and cabinet guy. Always the promise that it’ll be summer, or December, and now, after the new year. As if I can effectively brace for the lack of a kitchen? It’s where we all go. Where I go mostly. I can’t picture microwaving in the dining room or figuring out how the air fryer in my new toaster oven is going to simplify mealtime. All the food prep will get reduced to opening the fridge and moving something into a microwave, toaster oven or crock pot. Surely doing dishes in a bathroom sink (the only one we will have) can’t go well. We need Draino at the ready as it is. I imagine it will all feel fast. Will we become airport diners? Leaning against a counter and popping in food quickly in a just get it done approach. Get in, get out. Sustenance complete. Check. This could last three months, or it could go on for six. Either way I know I’ll need to find a cozy nook in this dining room food court I’m about to fashion. That I’ve chosen to worry about this as often as I have tells me I’ve got work to do. Quiet down and let it unfold as it will.
How lucky to even be renovating a kitchen. And that it will come with a working dishwasher (ours has been out for nearly half the year). And a large working oven will be nice as well (ours breathed its last months ago). A level cooktop is coming and with more burners, too, a step up from our two back burners, the only ones that ignite. The sweet little kitchen has cranked out beautiful foods and moments and soon it will be reduced to a pile of rubble. An Emory writing teacher I had years ago once came here for a visit and her jaw dropped when she went in the kitchen. The wall tile is the same as her grandmother had and seeing it flooded her back to treasured times. I hope to remove several tiles and surprise her all these many years later. I will miss the room. I know its strengths and sounds and weaknesses like a dear old friend’s, and I’ve swept up a confetti of dog hair and catnip and crumbs and carrot shavings from its uneven ugly linoleum floor. I once made eye contact with a sweet mouse in here who peered at me from behind the stove. I’m hoping that the new year brings with it a kitchen, and a forward focus and quieter, calmer me.
My mother always told me, “Susie, you talk just to hear yourself talk.” If only she were alive, I could offer up a smart retort, something to the tune of, “Well, where do you think I got this chattiness? Could it be YOU?” You should have heard her. Always with a clever story, on the phone with friends, or entertaining people at our house, but she is right. I love to talk—to myself, the cats, anyone who will listen. I need it to work through things. Seems my sister gets the brunt of it, the stuff I tell no one else, and she is the smartest, calmest, warmest sounding board I know. I’m not sure she’s exactly pinching herself over her lucky lot, but I am.
I started this Hindsight blog in 2017. Friends who liked various Facebook posts I’d write often suggested I start a blog, and their support propped me up and nudged me to actually do it. What a boost to write something that speaks to someone, because other than talking to hear myself talk, that really is the point. Connection. To know your take on things is like someone else’s, or that you aren’t the only one wrestling with something difficult or experiencing something particularly awe-inspiring, or that your strain of humor can make a person laugh is everything. It’s addictive, this fuel like no other. With the blog came a few setbacks. Initially someone remarked that my blog was not a real blog, and immediately there was that feeling like no one got my Halloween costume. I was exposed, inexperienced, an imposter. Is this any good, even a blog, what’s the point? It’s a personal blog and it doesn’t fit in a neat little box. It’s all over the place. Like me. But those details! Then there was WordPress to wrestle with, but I found a basic template that worked. Doubts would reappear if my posts went unread and unnoticed, but simply writing them fired me up, and so I kept going. Then cancer struck and the posts practically wrote themselves, stories people particularly wanted to read. The election and travels and house construction, and tales of pets and people, too, found their way into more essays.
During a recent memoir class, after reading one of my cancer blogs, one woman noticed something. While she learned all about the details of chemo and radiation, she said she was left wondering how I felt having gone through it all, and in the middle of a global pandemic no less. She thought I seemed a bit detached, disassociated even, in my writing. More like a reporter than a cancer survivor. I think I preferred telling myself things were fine maybe so I could avoid admitting I feared otherwise. You know, fake it ‘til you make it? There were times I felt alone, separate and hopeless, and for my own protection and reputation, blocked access—my own and yours–to these struggles. There’s a strange shame in fully letting you in. I kept weaving hope into it all because there is always hope, but also because the loose ends needed tying up so I could contain and tamp down the worry that kept coming around. I’m also a big fan of bows, so tying a big one around it all felt like I’d finished another story. The irony is I’ve probably only just begun.
Going forward, I want to mine deeper for the gold, that stuff that is locked up but that can open if you notice how your insides are responding to what is going on outside. There is down deep a craving for more connection, closeness, and what we have in common. More stillness too. Breathing, letting a single thought appear versus opening the door to the dozens that want to take over–that tangled string of flashing Christmas lights that begs you to unravel them and put them up, but you know now is not the time for that. Now is for you. Not everything is an emergency. Every thought doesn’t need to get expressed. Sit with it all. Maybe something bubbles up or maybe it doesn’t. The real time moments are all you’ve got, and only you can take them in. There are no Cliffs Notes for catching up later. The lessons are coming in and will keep coming, but the gate must be unlocked and stay open.
This essay marks 100. One hundred times I had the wherewithal, the excitement, the courage, and the intention to post a story, and every time I did, my own container, my Ziploc, puffed up and the air blew around. There is more to write about, and I might try a longer form project, but I don’t yet know. I am honored and grateful that you signed up to get these posts and that so many of you read them. I would love hearing if you have a favorite post or topic and why it spoke to you. I’ve loved speaking to you and with you, and this conversation has been the whole point all along.
The new year is a blank slate, a reset, a clean canvas to fill. As 2023 fades into the background, Hindsight and its 100 stories is taking a seat. This isn’t paint by numbers; there is no path our pencil must follow to see the picture unfold. Just as a blog can be whatever you make it, so can the chapters you create going forward. There is much more ahead to see and to share, and I can’t wait to see you there. Lots of love.
