Indifference

Shedding layers, gaining new ones

Fall from my window!

In grade school, we’d attend church as a class on a weekly basis. My grandmother always made sure all the parts of my uniform were ironed. The night before church I’d find each piece delicately hung on my door: pleated skirt, button down shirt, tie. My mom washed my hair to blow dry it. The results were voluminous and shiny, ends folded in, layers cascading nicely from the back. This was the 90’s, by the time my mom was done with my hair I was a baby Claufia Schiffer from the neck up. In getting the class ready for church, my teacher would have the girls stand to check the length of our skirts, before lining up in a single file to head to mass. 

When I was younger, I was indifferent. I used to wear a tote bag that read “Nothing Matters.” Wearing it out on the street I’d get a balanced combination of eye rolls and head nods. In mass with the rest of the school I’d notice the pews in the front were saved for staff and clergy members. I’d stare at the way they’d stare at the stained glass windows. I’d notice the way they’d stand, so focused and attentive. Lost in thought, found in their faith. They'd listen to every hymn with intention and made their proclamations almost like announcements, loud and firm: “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust”.

Perhaps they saw God through the scattered light that dazzled from the stained glass. Perhaps this was their collect-call, their time to clock in: Speak up, dish, tell God everything. Their faith belonged to no one but them. They wore it well, I’d think to myself. The rapture would come, and they wouldn’t be scared. Those people in the front row would ascend into heaven in celebratory form, not indifference. Memories of sweating through my uniform, my blowout slowly flattening thanks to the Miami humidity. 

I sat in the back. Every week, like a routine, we’d walk in as a class and I’d head for the back rows. Not knowing how to find my religion, church was just a reminder I had nothing that belonged to me. I’d look around to my peers, is anyone else struggling to find God the way I was? I could recite the prayers while working through my rosary beads. What else did I need to do? Should praying be hard? As I look back, I know God has made many collect calls, asking directly for me, but I was too withdrawn to pick up. 

At the time, my world was mapped out. In my head I’d imagine a thousand probable futures, all which didn’t require much work or sacrifice. When you don’t want anything that badly you never have to worry about being disappointed. In my head, I leaned on indifference as a way to keep myself from loving something or someone too much. You sleep good when there are no bills to pay and when you’re okay with below average grades. A lack of inner life is where my indifference came from. Would I even be able to survive getting what I wanted? I never marveled at cotton candy skies or reflective waves crashing onto rocks with the admiration I do now. 

Now with two kids and a husband, everything matters. There is intention in everything I do, whether I like it or not, even in the way I make pancakes in the morning. Too little milk or too little bisquick can change the trajectory of the entire day. If the strawberries are too sour then they’d omit eating fruit altogether. If the bacon is burned because I took too long wiping their butts in the bathroom then I get a family huddled together eating blackened bacon while sending me not-so-subtle eye rolls. It’s meaningless to say these ordinary moments mean everything to me, because I don't know anything that exists outside of this. The orange sun rises above our breakfast table every morning, my kids lick the syrup from their fingers. Vocation looks a little different lately. 

Yesterday my son turned five years old. So far what I know about having a five year old son is that our loyalty for each other runs deep. Him and I, we’re as thick as thieves, attacking our to-do list of building legos, creating our own Jurassic World with his dinosaur collection, and working through the same puzzle over and over. At this point, we can finish our puzzles in less than 10 minutes. He has lent me his ways of being in the world: I have taken things less seriously, I have impromptu dance parties with myself, I whine when there’s no more ice cream left for mommy, and I have begrudgingly memorized all the names of dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period. Right now, I dont view parenting as a sacrifice. If I can be like my son in everything I do, I can treat the world with the raw emotion that it deserves. 

Last week I saw Andrew Garfield cry on air over a Modern Love Essay. Andrew lost his mom to pancreatic cancer in 2019. He read a few sentences from the essay, then his voice cracked. Then came a pause. Following this brief quiet you could hear his sniffles, then see tears. He spoke again and this time his voice sounded lumpy with pain and curiosity. Imagine appreciating the fragility of life so much that you cry over a sentence. What I saw was the opposite of indifference. He admits his grief helps him feel closer to her. Through absorbing his grief he reflects power. No justifications, no apologies, he noticed the longing hidden behind those written words and spoke up about the way it moved him to tears. The “Nothing Matters” me likely would’ve scoffed at this. Actually, I likely would’ve never come across it at all. Once I became a teenager I forgot about the power of profound sentences, let alone how to love something so much you care about the texture of pancakes. “We all just want a fair shot at creating a life,” he goes on to explain. Maybe I have found religion. Maybe it’s right here, in his tears, in this kitchen, at our breakfast table. 

When you get older, you’re lucky if the indifference inside you eventually gets used up and there’s no more of it left. Like diesel flushing from an old truck. It’s a very lucky thing to care enough about making dentist appointments for yourself, to treat yourself to a meal you cooked, to pick up a book from time to time. It’s a lucky thing to love the people in your life so much that the love pierces through to your bones in such a way it makes you get up and get things done. To be an adult requires a large dose of self possession, to want to take care of yourself, for the sake of yourself but also for the sake of the people around you.

Yesterday my son told me he didn't want to wear his bright yellow raincoat because his classmates call him Baby Shark whenever he wears it. To reiterate, my son is five: a big boy that watches Camp Cretaceous and Big City Greens, not a baby that watches Baby Shark. My eyes saw his humiliation and my heart suddenly dropped into my pelvis. I felt so stupid for buying him a bright yellow raincoat. I should've known! Nothing is revocable once you have your own children to care for, even the choice of what color rain jacket to buy. We don’t move through the world without causing harm.

I’m re-reading the House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. I am working on an important essay (aren't they all in their own way?) where I am prompted to recall a book that made me fall in love with reading. Obviously, for me, it’s this one. I will never forget the first chapter about hair. Twenty eight years later, I can still vividly recall the feeling of being understood. To be a baby Claudia Schiffer meant that there were loads of hair everywhere else: I came complete with a unibrow, mustache, sideburns, and knuckle hairs. By the time I got to high school I was deemed Abraham Lincoln by my peers. The chapter continues, the main character describes the way she yearns for a best friend, how one day she will have one of her own. The chapter ends with “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.” I can’t promise my son won’t feel pain, but I can help him move with it.

At home, things are messy. My husband's work usually picks up around this time, everyone racing to meet their numbers by the end of the year. This means I am constantly being faced with how to keep two kids entertained. As it happens, I have resorted to doing things I swore I’d never do: We are in the kitchen together baking cupcakes with a regurgitative amount of sprinkles, we are building dinosaur terrariums complete with an explosive volcano, where we make lava out of red nail polish and glitter. My kitchen has never heard such a rollercoaster of passionate laughter and terrorizing screams. I am convinced people steer you away from messy things to keep you from having any fun. Just like the ones that say you can't pick up your baby because you’ll spoil them. How does that even make sense? When we are entranced in our art it’s like sitting in the first pew feeling the dazzling light from the stained glass windows. It’s like I’m no longer lost in the orbit of my looping thoughts. I vacuum the kitchen about three times a day. I am still finding kinetic sand in the seams of my wallet. There’s red polish stains on the sleeves of my pajamas. It’s just part of the rapture, our own celebrations. 

My kids are a lesson in passion and endurance. Because of them I’ve grown larger and gained many layers. Many selves. I’m getting to know them all, even the ones as a child. My goal is to eventually give all this largeness they’ve given me, back to them. They have become my refuge … that’s not too much to ask for from a 5 and 3 year old right? That they be my refuge? I’ve always wanted a fair shot at creating a life, and I think it’s here. The daily rhythms of parenting and partnership are relentless, but on the bright side, it’s revealing things that I like about myself. 

What a gift this is, to have all my indifference used up like an old, abandoned truck. To have had my hair blow dried to attend mass only to feel like an interloper, to have worn a beautifully ironed uniform that likely was the induction of my eventual imposter syndrome. To wear a tote that showed how desperately I yearned to be moved. Everything relates to each other because all my layers have brought me here. To soak up every sentence. To find sand in my purse. To admire the orange sun with puffy eyes. To watch a man cry and lose myself in his tears. God is calling again, will you pick up for me? I wasn’t capable of seeing what he was trying to offer.

Now I walk into my life and sit in the first pew. I don’t think there's a difference between domesticity and profundity but I would like to make a case for it. When I read parts of this aloud my voice gets hard and lumpy. Because everything matters. Every tear, every scream, every sunrise. It will get me to the next layer. What are the parts of yourself you don't yet know?