Gemma Hayes playing quietly in the living room. I let a good thing go. Trevor has just built a fire in the drafty fireplace, and so the flames are subtle then flaring. Like playing with a lighter.
I am unkempt but clean. No makeup and soft, spray/gel/bedhead-less hair roaming free, smelling alternately of shampoo and cigarette smoke. Vanilla-smelling wool sweater: the maroon one. I saw patches of blue sky before the sun set. Now the rain falls hard.
Poof goes the fire: I'm here. I'm not. Crackle nonetheless. (I can hear you.)
So this is the business of living: a whole day on the couch. Nothing accomplished.
Don't be so hard on yourself, the whole world says but me.
I talked to Shannon. (I love being checked in on, she says.) Bea loves her swing, sits cosily in the kitchen as her mama makes cookies. Shannon pokes her head into Dave's studio: do you forget sometimes that we have a baby, she asks.
I feel it all, Gemma keeps repeating. Quiet then building.
Days like these are so dark. I feel cocooned by November. And maybe that's just it: nothing was supposed to happen today but this.
[despite my desperate hope for let there be light.]
advent and breath-holding are upon us, it seems. How long?
and gemma again sums it up: ain't you the lucky one?
Annie, When I was 18-23, I worked with a woman in her thirties who became a close friend. She had a habit I found peculiar, which was to spend every New Year's Day in bed. Not because she was hungover (she was a teetotaler), but just because. It was how she recovered from one year and rested up for the next. She didn't sleep, necessarily. She read magazines and books, wrote a letter, snacked, sipped, prayed, resolved, whatever she wanted. I think of her all the time now, when I decide to spend a day in bed. I follow her example maybe twice a year, and it is restorative. If the couch calls, there's a reason.
beautiful, comforting thought, katy.
(you're a gift. thank you.)
Posted by: bananie at November 23, 2002 06:16 PM
If I had a fireplace, and the temporary loan of a Trevie to fill it, I too would never get off the couch.
x
Posted by: Bandude at November 27, 2002 02:26 AM