I had just returned from a brief trip back to my hometown to see some old friends. Emotionally fragile, I tried my best to engage in conversation with them and listen to their stories, though my heart wasn’t in it. I’d become too accustomed to living on an island, where my emotional sores fester in peace, alone. Social interaction feels foreign and pained at times.
When I returned, the house was a mess. My brother and my roommate had trashed it resoundingly in the few days I was gone. The tired Cinderella motif played out in my head, as I rushed around in the sweltering heat, cleaning up, trying to make my habitat feel like a home, even just a little.
Clint came over for coffee yesterday and my house smelled of rotten food. No one had taken out the trash while I was gone because apparently you need a fucking PhD to figure out how to perform this Herculean task. Putrefying bodies after a mass suicide in the tropics smelled better than my kitchen yesterday.
Clint came over for coffee yesterday and I knew he would. He looks forward to our talks and we're friends with similar "issues." Once he saw my truck pull into the driveway from my trip, I knew his arrival was imminent. I rushed around, trying to clean up. I want my friends to feel good when they enter my house, not nauseated.
But he got there too early and the scent was unbearable. I apologized, my face red with anger and mild humiliation. He tried to help but had to leave the kitchen at one point because the smell was so bad. Finally, trash was removed, coffee brewed and sanity restored.
(But was it? There's a price for constantly having to make things right when you're already busting at the seams. Needless caretaking is backbreaking and taxing. Nobody talks about the price-tag.)
Over coffee, Clint told me of a woman he had hooked up with the night before. This was a big deal. Neither of us have seen much action as of late. I gave him a high five for “taking one for the team” and asked for details.
He said it was awkward a bit, actually. He felt a little unskilled, “rusty.” His mind was whirring with a million thoughts the whole time.
“I used to be able to seduce a woman much easier. I used to stick my tongue in someone’s ear with confidence. Now…”
He trailed off and looked thoughtfully into the freshly Windexed table.
“Now my mind...it has a life of its own. I can’t control it anymore.”
His last words punched me in the gut, resonating with me too deeply. My paper-thin veneer began ripping. Tears filled my eyes as he continued his story. He looked up at some point. “Are you alright?”
I burst into tears. "No, no I’m not" I laughed, in that undoing sort of way. "I’m not even close to alright. What you said about your mind having a mind of its own. I don’t know what to do. I’m...falling down. I have been for a while.”
He reached out and held my hand on the newly Windexed table, the smell of deathrot slowly fading away with the summer breeze.
“It’s going to be alright. We’re going to be alright.”
His hand felt so warm and firm and good. All that was good was in our hands. Warmth and love and connection and friendship. Nothing felt better. He held my hand and let go of it at just the right moment, not a second too early.
Isn't it amazing, what a small gesture can do? Even old embedded pain or anger can dissipate in the soft breath of an instant. It's funny - you’re so sure those wounds are a permanent splinter in your soul - and yet one kind word or gesture can yank it out in a flash. It's almost a miracle.
I'm always waiting for flowers. Flowers from people who hurt me. A note or a box of candy. Or a word of love. A wise explanation. A touch of acknowledgment. Then I'll feel released. Then my spirit will rise again.
I'm always waiting for flowers. From the people who left me, who didn’t apologize, who disregarded my feelings, who didn't show up, who may have used me, who didn't honor me.
I don’t even like flowers that much. It’s the symbol of flowers I always await. But they don't come.
Clint came over for coffee yesterday and saved my life a little. He gave me the symbol of a flower. With a touch of his hand. It was that simple.
Clint with small flower, Summer 2009
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Margaret Hawke
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Beth Winegarner
BellemeadeBooks
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Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman
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Comments
Just came in from the studio for a tea break and found this piece from you, fresh and searingly open...another exotic and perfect "Beth flower". Planted right in my path.
I have been collecting them for a while now.
The boquet(sp?) is spectacular, colors akimbo, addictive scent.
Garbage to compost to fertilizer. Whatever. Shit is useful in that such things of beauty spring from it.
I love wandering through your gardens.
p.s. Your brother is a dick. Next time put the offending whatever in his bed.
Sending metaphorical flowers in the form of understanding and good thoughts. You are loved, Beth Mann. You are loved. Even when it doesn't quite feel like it.
I am still carrying around some pain, and waiting... for what I don't know. Some kind of resolution I guess. You said it best, in your post.
I also used to have a male friend that I connected with. When he came over on Saturdays, I was glad he liked to sleep in Saturday mornings because it gave me time to get myself together. I would clean and get ready for what the day might bring- companionship.
When I entered my house last night after being gone for several days, it smelled horrific too. I had cleaned out the frig when I left and I left a small sack of chicken and dumplings in the sink that I had intended to toss. Yuck. I burned beans a few weeks ago. Gross. And, I was really looking forward to the beans, since I never make them. But, smells. Good and bad. I am sensitive to that.
I would like a friend of mine to read this post!
rated.
I surfed TWO waves that were big today and then got the hell out for a bit, to collect myself. They were SO big!
dragonlady, wildflowers are my favorite
kitehlips, thanks for noticing that connection - unintended consciously, with garbage/fertilizer. and thanks for your poetic comment
athena, thanks for understanding of dark places
and owl, it felt good to read your story about your friend. same thing. very same thing. almost like a moment of grace that splits you wide open.
I think I'm going to get myself some flowers today in your honor.
Caretaking and putting up with someone elses shit is exhausting. Hang in there.
It's the smallest things that often mean the most, but then you know that already.
I get this, Beth. In a big way.
And I also believe that we will all be alright.
Your comment about “a moment of grace that splits you wide open” made me think of an exquisite, epiphanic passage from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek where Annie Dillard talks about the clouds splitting open and this luminous ray of sunshine streaming through the cracks in the sky. Something like that. I just spent half an hour trying to find one of my TWO copies of Pilgrim, and I couldn’t bloody find either one of them. So I tried searching online, but to no avail. I did, however, stumble upon a passage from the chapter “The Art of Seeing,” in which Dillard describes the Japanese art of floral arrangement! How perfect is that. So here is the unexpected passage I found, like a patch of wild irises waiting beside the creek:
“We may study examples of traditional beauty such as flowers rearranged in an unusual way, one that takes us by surprise. You will see this in the Japanese art of Ikebana or floral arrangements. When the Japanese arrange flowers, they often do so in an asymmetrical way, a way that can enchant or intrigue us with its tension and beauty. These arrangements often appear to teeter on the edge of falling apart.”
—Melissa
Thanks
rated
These are for you.
Love Grandma....so funny. I too looked for a book for HOURS a few days ago. On performance art. So I feel your frustration. Thank you for the excerpt. Too fitting.
I hope things will continue to look up for you!!
1. "I'm not all right." Such small words that reveal the largest of pain. I'm so glad he asked, and that you answered.
2. My "Clint" just moved across the Atlantic Ocean to Malta and I think my heart went with him. He held my hand like no other. It's been 72 hours and I feel like even the trees and grass look different without him near by. I am so glad your Clint is still there, with you. As he should be.
many xs and os.
Rated
Great story
- rated
" It's funny - you’re so sure those wounds are a permanent splinter in your soul - and yet one kind word or gesture can yank it out in a flash. It's almost a miracle."
If that isn't my truth, nothing is.....
"Then I'll feel released. Then my spirit will rise again."
Thanks Beth, for saying it so well.
Here's to flowers when you need them....
"Actions speak louder than words."
Here's to people who understand.
As for the waves, yes, I have surfed. I came, I saw, I conquered. I'm beaten like a boxer on the 14th round. Fried and beaten. But it was fun. Crazy, big, fun. I've had CRAZY moments the last few days. I've seen WALLS of water. walls, I tell you.
I'm going to write about it, I think - well, about a tournament I have this Wed. Not thrilled about competing but going to give it a shot...I think!
a long-stemmed cyber-rose for you, beth. take good care of yourself.
(I know it's sappy but it kinda fit.)
heartfelt, well-crafted, daring repetition to great effect, moving characters, intriguing back story left wonderfully undefined, literary resonance of lingering death stench done with casual & sly elegance.
wonderful use of images. first rate in every way.
I, too, returned from a long trip away, mine a disappointment buffered by hard efforts at reframing, to find my dear adult housesitting nephew had taken one of my new pillowcases, part of my first new set of sheets in years, to a sleepover and not brought it back, along with my favorite bath towel. Your story puts my minor annoyances at lost linens in perspective.
I wish I knew a Clint, though.
Clint=Cause Love Is Nicer Today.
Oh, shit. There I went and let down my gritty old fart's facade.
Speaking from experience, and this is only my experience, I'm not holding it up as everyone's experience or the perfect experience - even if one who's wronged you apologizes, even if they give you flowers of apology, it doesn't always make it right. It depends upon the aforethought involved in the wronging. It really depends upon if they knew what they were doing. And if they did, then no flattering doughty weight of apologeiac petals and fronding will fix it.
I'm just sayin'.
Nice post.
BR
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