Posts tagged quiet time

under my skin

While the kids were away, I got a tattoo. I took the bus into the city, subway into Brooklyn, all the while imagining the letters on my wrist, on the inside, so that when I glanced down I would always see them, at least a peek, the words full of meanings, in lettering that comes from a Polish school primer, the elementarz which taught me how to write before I ever got to this country. Something for the world to help it figure out something about me.

We were together. I forget the rest. 

I wondered about commas and periods, about the usefulness of punctuation. And how any bit of ink on your skin is meaningful, or should be. Even a single dash. Or nothing at all ~ a string of words uninterrupted. A Walt Whitman quote, often paraphrased like so, until the misquote became the truth. The real words come from Leaves of Grass and they start with ‘day after day, night after night, we were together.’ I read it somewhere back in December, and it was like seeing a light in a tunnel. Something bright along the way, just when you need it most. All I care about lately - in these times - is being with people I love, and making meaningful human connection. Also, an inside joke - because I never ‘forget the rest.’ I carry the rest inside me - but this, on my arm, would be a daily reminder. (Remember, carry ~ but don’t let it drag you down.) 

It felt like spring today. Maybe that’s what did it. The morning started out with sleet, a little snow on its last legs, a measly effort to stick around, like neighbors you invite over who have trouble leaving until they finally get the hint. I decided somewhere around noon that I would go into Greenpoint, on this last day before the kids get back, to see my littlest nephew, and to get inked. 

The kids have been gone since Monday. It’s been cold and dreary, and so seeing them in photographs - California sunshine and short sleeves, their cheeks puffy, their brows sweaty - made it better, made the secret happiness of being without them acceptable. 

It’s a wonder what a person can do when they momentarily stop being a mom.

My days were busy and lazy all at once. I decided when to work, and when to sit back. Time was mine, a gift slipped into my pocket. I read two whole books. I wrote so much. I tidied up and embarked on spring cleaning even though it was so fucking cold and gray that spring in April seemed like a broken promise. I worked out and ate when I felt like it. Days were endless and then over in a flash. And then, night. 

I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed with the TV on, with three books lost in the comforter, with my iPhone and that game where I buy diamonds to furnish rooms that strange people vote on. I slept with a serrated knife next to me on the bedside table. A bowl full of pineapple chunks. A bottle of water. Night was fitful and finicky. I missed my husband next to me, snoring on and off, me telling him to please cut it out please, are you old now, Patrick? On the third night the kids were away, I meandered online and there I discovered a name - Julia Davis. She’d created a show called Camping and I watched it on my phone which was propped against a throw pillow, me on my side, one eye sinking into the matters, useless. Even in a dreamlike state, half awake and angry about it, I binged the episodes, hoping to be that bold and brave in my choices as an artist. At four am I fell asleep, dreaming of cold British seas and people who have noisy sex in outdoor showers.

What else did I do while the kids were gone? 

I went to dinner with two friends - one close to me, one standing on the horizon. Friendship is tricky, even at forty-one, and maybe especially. It was nice to talk quickly, intimately, about things women talk about. Neuroses, fears, work, marriage and sex, the despair of niceties, travel. We didn’t talk about our kids - not milestones, or report cards, or time-outs. That part I only realized in hindsight. That we didn’t really go on about our children. I’m glad. You can get to know women without having to know how they mother. It is possible. The waiter appeared at our table ~ can I top you off? - every five minutes, and at first we laughed that he fancied us. But then no, no, we didn’t need our waters refilled constantly. Just leave us in peace to discuss cunnilingus and Paris and business ventures. But he was who he was - a quiet little hoverer - and after awhile we just waved him off. Time is precious, when you find time for yourself. 

Later, I thought about men ~ and how they don’t know how to talk this way - or maybe how they don’t want to, or don’t think they need to, and that maybe if they knew how to unload, how to dissect feelings, how to verbalize the things that are hard to talk about - maybe if revealing the tender, doubtful parts of themselves was an instinct - the world would be a much different place. 

Later, I walked down Bedford Avenue to get my ink. You can just walk into a parlor and say this is what I want, on my body, like this, right now. And in a moment - in a little under thirty minutes - something imaginary becomes permanent. It didn’t hurt, but then again this was my eighth one. I stared at my knees, and nodded while the tattoo artist talked about his hometown. He had a drawl and it was soothing. 

Tonight is my last night of being alone. So, I write. I think about the noise that will come back tomorrow, how the house will not be quietly pulsing with ticking clocks and echoes and silence, but loud with feet and shouts, and pleas and bargaining. I write and glance down at my arm, and the only word visible, from this angle, at this keyboard as I type is the word together. 

This is what I did, when the kids were away.