Pervasive Days.
I've been back from my summer away for nearly two months. I finally put all my jewelry away that had been sitting in a lock box. I'd fish out a piece every now and then, but mostly I'd been wearing the hull I'd pulled out for the summer. That's how these things usually go. Yet, as I pulled the pieces from the box, I wasn't prepared for the memories woven into silver and stone. The black beaded chocker I wore to a friend's Vegas wedding, for which I was the Maid of Honor. She and I don't speak anymore, yet I can't pass on the necklace I've long not worn. It hangs on a back hook in the jewelry case, so I rarely see it. Memories of our twenty-year friendship linger, pervasive, and are here to stay like a roach infestation that baffles the best Orkin man, yet I won't reach out. Read a few posts back, as my heart doesn't have it left in me.
I don't have jewelry from my sister. There's a ring I bought for my Dad to give her. It's on his desk, and he's not ready to let it go. When he is, I'll take it. I may not wear crosses, but that one I would. These days I've needed her more than I'd like to admit. Even in the anger of what she left me with, and even in the bitterness of life when she would do what she would do, I still remember the fleeting days when she would show up for me. Right now, my heart aches for siblings long gone, and the wreck of my life long for one of them on my phone.
She did wear a ring I bought her for her 40th birthday until she died. It was a wide ring with "faith" scripted on it. I saw it in a photo she posted not long before the cancer effects took her. That intangible memory gives me solace. I hope her mother is haunted by it. Yes, I said what I said.
I hear there's fingerprint jewelry I can get made. That I believe I need more than not. My Dad should have the fingerprints, but he can't bring himself to look in the box of our records. Much like that ring on his desk, there are layers of grief that never fade away. I've still got a card from Andy Jr and one from Vinnita, and at some point, I'll have those fingerprints and engrave them with their handwriting. I won't get ink of them on my body as I find that perverse. While I have cherry blossoms wrapped in an anchor with a butterfly, with those pink buds about my brother, I personally find the labeling of names and dates on my body as too much. People die, and we can't keep them alive. We can grieve, mourn, and miss them, but we can not bring them back. Tonight is a night I might pull my brother's fleece out. That's where my heart is. I slept with his shirt for a year after he passed, and it took me fifteen years to say his name again. A year and a half after his death, I went to his place of internment. I still haven't been to Vinnita's. It's been a year and three months. So, I guess I'm on track as I was with Andy Jr.
As I put laundry away today and placed accessories into their holding spots, I heard myself say, "I need to see my sister." That I do. I think in January I'll find the time and spend a week. I've been saying I'd go to the Grand Canyon for a while, and I have to do so. So, as with so many things in my life, I'll be doing this alone. I'm the only one here to show up for myself. Tanfer's too far away, and there's no one else. That's a heartbreaking and terrible testament to my own life, but the truth is what it is. Perhaps my Dad would be ready to go, as I'd stay with my Mom for a few days. Perhaps. Sometimes I shock myself; today was one of those moments at I hung black tees ready for wear in the days ahead.
As I flashed to lunches with Tanfer as necklaces and rings found their homes, I remembered long summer days in Colorado and walks through Boulder as I smiled as I fingered beaded hoops. A part of me will always love Colorado, even with the heartbreak the state has given me. Thinking about it now makes my heart bleed in ways I didn't know I had left in me. When you think you're done grieving and losing, there's still more hidden around corners and in cracks, you thought were minimal and benign.
Ridiculously hot walks this past summer in Istanbul seep from an elephant ring I wear, and days of chaos and dreams envelop a ring from the old Afghan market at Sultanahmet. The latter was purchased fourteen years ago. These days I long for the apartment from last summer, with the view and breeze. The camiler calls to prayer, jolting me from a deep slumber at five am, lingering like a lover's kiss in my mind's eye. I miss the boats of the Bosphorus and the calls to prayer in similar ways. I miss the sirens of New York City, and the endless voices as Athenians wander home at hours long past sunset. The things we miss are often intangible and fleeting. Yet, they capture our memory and mind in ways we could never predict. My endless days in Greece remind me of perfect escapes. I need these right now.
I sent Tanfer a pic of a turquoise necklace I was given ions ago. Aunt Sharon, i.e., a family friend, gave it to me. It's pewter and mini squash blossom style. I wondered if she knew that five-year-old dolled up, with her curls bouncing like slinkies, would still have those pieces 40+ years later. Sometimes she still crosses my mind. Every now and again, I wear one of the turquoise pieces I have from her. Every now and again, life brings a season for it.
I smelled someone smoking a Marlboro Red this week. I stopped in my tracks, breathing in the stench, and remembered my sister. If I could only capture Marlboro Red smoke into a locket for release on the days of life when the lonely seasons become so heartbreaking that the broken can't stand to breathe it in anymore.
Over the past month, I've had two accounts of threats to my personal safety. It took acts of hell to finally get a pepper spray canister for my key ring. I had to show up for myself on that one. That's not the kind of jewelry you store away in your trinket box, but it is the type of accessory both of my dysfunctional siblings would have expressed mailed to me. And that is what I am left with these days.
My life's struggles, insults, and inhumanity are smashing me these days. Just wasting my soul as I struggle to recover from a writer's block so fierce I literally sit frozen at my computer, fretting that I won't have my presentation for Tuesday done, that every decision in my life is bound for another colossal failure, that loving again will be another act of self-destruction as I'm not valuable enough to hang around for, and that I'll still be stuck in a stationary moment without growth while those around me continue to move on and evolve in ways my life's station prevents. Seven years ago I wondered if I would ever love again. These days I wonder what the power of loving again is worth. Is it me? Is it just life, as we call it?
Perhaps the writer's block is cracked.
Comments