somethings and nothings

What lovely words. Image from here.

So November has come and gone without me even writing a post, which is really just baaaadddd.

It has been a mix-up of good and bad things and mostly me trying to struggle with deadlines and me trying to sneak out to get to a lecture or to have time to see friends and attempt to have a life.

I have been busy yet there is this feeling that the busyness that has taken over is filled with such insignificant things.

It's not a bad place, where I am, but I am always questioning why I am unable to move past this -- to wow myself and the world in ways that I thought I would.

There is the feeling that I have been filling my days with "nothings" and this is why I haven't written -- but then again, I suppose things it is up to me to make "something" out of things. What makes a moment, a thing, a person special anyway?

When I began the idea for writing this, I was thinking of how I felt left behind by my peers -- My body has forced me to graduate through certain phases of my life, but I don't necessarily feel as though I've recovered.

There is that feeling of always just needing to catch up on life.

Now though, all thoughts turn to a dearest friend who has encountered a sad thing. Why do things happen the way they do anyway?

Chance meetings

Image from here.

Where do your mundane activities lead you? The other day, I was doing homework and then I suddenly found myself caught up in one of those whirlwinds that leave you shaken for days, even weeks (I hope not) after.

What began as research for class turned into one of those three-hour conversations that you keep in the pockets of your mind - an unwitting bench mark for more meaningful conversations in the future. The conversation itself felt a bit like literature (carefully crafted questions, beautifully written responses, glimpses of brilliance in little turns of phrases). And it began so innocently - a thing that I needed to check off my to-do list. It was Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail who so aptly put it: "The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings." And so it has, for me at least. In the three hours that we spoke, I've said more to that stranger than I have to those I call my friends. It was both strange and fascinating, a bit like walking on a ledge, edging closer and closer to see how far you can go without actually falling. It felt a bit like putting myself out there, like taking a chance, like all those other cliches that people use to say falling in love without actually having to say it. It felt like dangling my legs by the edge, wondering how it felt to jump into something so foreign, so unknown. I jumped.

It ended as abruptly as it began.  At the end of the third hour, I realized how strange we actually were to each other. It had taken him that long to tell me that he was getting married. Soon. After that, we exchanged nothing more but polite pleasantries. I said goodbye before I could do more things I would regret. But when I remember things he said, I don't, really. It's only when I hear his words in my head that I feel haunted.  Haunted by the idea that I could meet someone like that, so late, too late. Haunted by the idea that he might be the only one like that. Haunted by the idea that while I will keep those three hours worth of words for a long time (maybe forever), I know that he has already forgotten me. How could he not?

My head is still above the water though, I'll live.

survival

So I am writing this in the aftermath of one of the worst calamities to hit our country in years. And for the first time, I actually know of people who suffered the horrible fate of losing everything because of this tragedy. Well, everything material, I suppose. In that sense they (my friends who lost their homes) are more lucky because while they lost everything they are all safe.

It got me to think about whether or not I had it in me to survive a tragedy. Not just this one, but any one in particular. I'm not sure I do. I just finished reading this poignant book by Anna Quindlen, and one of the entries which struck me the most is the entry she wrote about her mother. She wrote:

"We're different, those of us whose mothers have gone and left us to fend for ourselves. For that is what we wind up doing, no matter how good our fathers, or family, or friends: On some deep emotional level, we fend for ourselves. The simplest way to say it is also the most true - we are the world's grownups. 'No girl becomes a woman until her mother dies' goes an old proverb. No matter what others may see, or she herself thinks, we believe down to our bones that our mother's greatest calling was us; with that fulcrum to our lives gone, we become adults overnight.

x x x

Sometimes, missing my mother, I lose track of whether I am missing a human being or a way of life. Our mothers only slowly become people to us, as we grow older and they do, too. But for years and years they are both more and less than that. First they are warmth and food and an inchoate sense of security, then cheerleader and overseer, then finally listener, perhaps even friend. Our family was a wheel; she was the hub. Without her we fell apart, a collection of sticks. We've knit back together, some of us, as adults, but it has never really been the same.

There is something primitive about this love and this loss. What does it mean, to sleep beneath the heart of another person, safe and warm, for almost a year? No scientist can truly say. but it must have some visceral power that we cannot really understand, only intuit. She was the only person who ever loved me unconditionally. That was her great gift, too. It has been the bulwark of my life, has made everything else possible. When I can see myself refracted through the rosy lens of my mother's love, it melts the self-doubt and brings to life the tiny sanctuary lamp of confidence.

x x x

It's been twenty-five years, and I can even joke about it now, in a macabre way. I refuse to go and see what I call "dead mother movies"; I can watch Terms of Endearment when it comes on television until Debra Winger goes to the hospital, and then I'm out of there. I only go to my mother's grave when I attend family funerals. I don't see the point; she's not in there. She's in me, the way I was once in her, only not as tangible. Inspirational books would have us believe that that is sufficient. That is such utter nonsense that my lip curls just writing the words. Because here is the final thing about having your mother die: You never, ever get used to it. You want her back. Or at least I do."

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I am lucky that I still have my mother, though I never really felt like I had her in the way some of my friends do - to brush their hair and share secrets to and go shopping with and talk about boys with - but she is my mother. And she has been a mother to me. Despite my pessimism, she somehow manages to pray for me and tell me to eat my vegetables and see potential even when I am being the laziest oaf in the world. I don't know how I would survive without her. I don't know how I would live without her. At the moment, I suppose, I feel as if I can survive any tragedy apart from losing my parents. Anything but that.