On the ties that bind
and sometimes a good television show helps, too
Because that’s how it really is, isn’t it? I’m not so sure I still believe that I am forging a life for myself all on my own, or of my own making, or that I have any free will at all.
“I don’t have anything to write about,” I say, looking at the time on the car dashboard. It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the car in my plaid flannel pajama bottoms and slippers. Already the list of to-dos for the weekend is heavy on my mind.
“Isn’t this what you say every time?” says my son from the driver’s seat.
“Well, usually I have a few scrawled notes somewhere and I can make something from that. But I didn’t even take a note this week,” I say.
My son has pulled into the Honey Dew donuts line and we’re idling with four cars in front of us. I have my hand on his neck giving him a neck rub and looking out my window towards the dumpster. The overflowing Japanese knotweed at the edge of the parking lot is in full flower, with little feathery white blossoms like a crown. In this autumn season, it doesn’t look quite as menacing as it does in the summer— so robust and greedy for space.
“You know, when you were a baby, you didn’t like me to touch you,” I say.
“I don’t like it right now, either. But you are my mother giving me a ride so I’m trying to ignore it.”
“Your brother always liked a back rub,” I say.
“Yeah, well I am not my brother,” he says.
I laugh and pull my hand away.
“Why is everyone in the drive-through this morning?” he says, and taps his hand a few times on the steering wheel. “I am always trying to be the person everyone can count on, but now it seems like I am the person that is always late.”
“You know that is a part of having ADD, right?” I say.
“I know, but I keep trying,” he says.
I read an article recently that claimed that a new science of neuro plasticity shows that you actually can re-grow brain cells and you can change the structure and function of your brain by the way you think. I wonder a lot about that. Doctors told my cousin this week that her mom suffered a brain bleed that would impair her for the rest of her days, that she was critical. And yet, my aunt is sitting up, even standing up, only days later. The doctors are amazed.
My sister-in-law posts a daily positivity quote on Facebook and I read it every day. Some days, if I’m being truly honest, I don’t want to hear it. It sounds too positive for me. But today I think she has it exactly right. This morning, she posted a photo of her recently deceased father with the words: be the things you loved most in the people who are gone.
“Do you have a suit for Sunday’s funeral? You should go through your clothes and leave them out for me,” I say.
My son pulls the car up to the window and asks for three bottles of water and an ice coffee. He doesn’t answer me. It’s becoming very apparent to me this morning just how much I sound like Ruth Fisher.
Janyce and I have spent the past few weeks chilling out at the end of the workday on the couch “re-binge watching” a few episodes each night from the entire season of the early 2000s television show Six Feet Under. Ruth is the mom of a dysfunctional family of three grown children, in a family funeral business that is also the family home, and each colorful character is grappling with what it means to age, be part of a community, and make a meaningful life. The show falls under my favorite genre of television series: the dramedy. I don’t typically care for sitcoms or romcoms or even plain comedy in general. Instead, I prefer this show’s particular moody soundtrack, the brooding and whining characters who yell at each other and do so many things wrong and then apologize. I like that each episode opens with a formulaic storytelling device: a random death that comes into the funeral home each episode to set the stage, with everyone needing to react and adapt to it.
Because that’s how it really is, isn’t it? I’m not so sure I still believe that I am forging a life for myself all on my own, or of my own making, or that I have any free will at all. Everything I do is dependent on what is happening around me, what part of the web of my life is getting tugged at any one moment.
“Do you think it’s odd that we are watching this show all over again? I said to Janyce last night on the couch. “I mean, the timing of it?”
“Not really,” said Janyce. “It’s just a good show.”
Funerals and sudden strokes and family reunions and aging parents and grown children fill up every one of our days lately. “I mostly counsel women in their fifties because they really need this most of all,” said my nutritionist and coach this week on one of our scheduled calls. “You have to find some silence and space for just you or none of this is going to work,” she said.
I think about that as I look at the clock. 10:00 am. Not too bad. Still time for a walk through the woods today before I run to the store, and set the table for the family birthday dinner tonight. This weekend there will be too much driving and too much sadness and too much food and too much cake and so much laughter and so many memories and a whole lot of family and all of that is okay with me.