Snow

I don't know if it's the weather but...

The Magpie (1868) by Claude Monet

New York woke up to, yea, that’s right, more snow. Mhm. I don’t know what to say about it anymore, so I’ll talk around it instead: I am thinking about the Kermit the Frog meme where he’s seen staring out of a window, pensive and a little somber, with a hand on the glass. When you’ve seen how high the snow can get, how trapped you can feel with two boys reliant on your constant care, a husband who checks Bloomberg every 2 minutes only to blow raspberries and exclaim “these guys just don’t get it,” you realize the snow is an entrapment device. We have spent too many days together. Every snowfall consumes me. Every inch of white pulling me more inwards. I try to write about these consumptions but I am constantly interrupted by the needs of the people in this house. What can I tell you as I look at this window?

I am taking an “observation” class and the only thing I can observe about my surroundings is that everything is dead, bare, and covered in blankets of snow. Yet it is an incredible class that confirms how interiority can be expressed through exteriority. Winter’s silence takes up so much space, the snow here is endless. The tops of the Linden trees have “marshmallows on top” as my kids say. The boxwoods are submerged by white. There are tiny, frantic footprints in the snow and the boys’ debate about whether it’s bunnies or raccoons. Winter evokes so much emotion, and in my observation class we talk around this in beautiful ways. Seasons are cycles, and just like pain cycles in and out of us, the same applies for nature. “Pain is the vessel for everything that’s beautiful,” I tell myself. Listen, I know it’s cringey, but it works. I could be a sad Kermit right now, because in a month from now I hope to be standing in a nursery, paying witness to the spring blooms.

My husband just came in and asked me where we keep the scissors. So I had to get up to show him the drawer where they’ve been kept for the past 5 years…

My writing program has me depleted of descriptions, of interiority, of “showing not telling.” “Move this beyond catharsis,” I hear. The more I learn about it the more I will subdue myself to it, surrender. I’ll convince myself that none of us know what we are doing, even the award winning writers. That’s how you’ll find me: Coping. Projecting. Dismissing their craft for the lack of knowledge I have for it. But I know what my problems are on the page: I am too busy meandering, thinking and processing, and I want to take the reader along with me. I want to write something that can describe the joys and sorrows I feel all at once. I believe writing can hold it, all my burdens. I believe the reader can sit through it. The duality of my emotions, the highs and the lows, is ever present in my mind, and therefore here on the page: My kids take a bite of dirty snow every time we go outside. I haven’t spoken to my father in 5 months.

As I write my oldest screams: “Mom it’s not a bunny or raccoon, it’s a CHIPMUNK.” He’s frozen as he watches it. “Look, it’s Alvin, mom!” I get up from my seat and we watch the teeny chipmunk bounce their way through the snow. This is the best-case scenario, the culprit of the footprints. Alvin is a character that helps my eldest child feel deeply seen, since all he does is defy instruction and get himself into trouble.

Last week, I shared gummy bears with a friend after she spoke to the class about her survival. She emptied the bag and laid them out on top of her notebook. “I hope you don’t mind my germs,” she said. “ME?” I replied, “the woman who cleans pee driblets from the toilet seat every night?” She let her head fall back and laughed wide to display three gummies in her mouth: red, green and pale? I don’t know the color name for that one.

Lately everything I say begins with “I don’t know if it’s the weather, but I think I’m going insane?” and I look around suspiciously for someone to agree with me. I choose not to give anymore context, but each snowfall chips away at my sanity in ways I can’t yet describe. I am seeing a new therapist and naturally, I am withholding from her. I don’t want to come off too strong. I repress important details. I patronize myself. So, after I divulge in something halfheartedly I’ll laugh passively and say, “It’s probably the weather though!”

“I notice some sadness in your voice,” my new therapist decides to tell me during our conversation yesterday. How did she know that talking about all the ways sadness thrives in the way I live is my favorite thing to talk about? This woman, she, she just gets it. She has my number. She can pay a visit to my sad, marshmallow world anytime. It is a privilege to let her into it. Eventually.

7

My youngest just came in and typed the number 7.

I have been off Instagram for over a month. I can admit that to you now, now that my withdrawals are at a safe distance. Because two weeks ago, I’d pick anything up: a tv remote, a mandarin, my wallet, and attempt to scroll it. But now I don’t have anything idyllic to look at anymore: I can’t copy what all the cool girls are wearing, I can’t cook what all the foodies are eating. So I find myself a sad Kermit once again, staring out into the bleakness of deep winter, forced to endure the discomfort of my own company, and the needs of the people in this house.

My grandmother is 85 and thriving. Sometimes she will heat up her hot chocolate in the microwave for 32 minutes instead of 2 minutes, an innocent slip of the finger she doesn’t catch, a small mistake that can lead to a slew of other problems if left unmonitored, but yesterday she cooked grilled chicken with onions, braised cabbage with tomatoes and olives, and took leftover rice and converted it into fried rice with cubed ham. She is, above all else, a woman of service, of the kitchen. Her art is translated through her cooking, as mine is translated here. But her mortality is always on my mind, all the ways our relationship will change when it’s her time to transition. But right now, we can sit and eat her food together. As I took bites of her food I said, “My God! How did you make this?” To which she smirked and responded, “I’m a professional.” Her hands, bulging with blue veins, nails chipped with red polish, picked up my plate and refused to let me clean up. I am close to turning 40, but somehow when I’m with her, I’m a child all over again.

My son just came in with a stick figure drawing of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. “Mom, doesn’t this look so realistic?” It obviously doesn’t, it’s a stick figure! But I keep this to myself. He goes on to explain that this T Rex lives in a jungle and then swims using his strong legs to catch fish from the bottom of the ocean and then will lay his body down to rest under the sun. My kids are a reminder that it is not embarrassing to want to be seen, that our inner worlds could be shared with the world with the hopes that the world absorb it. These contributions can extend from personal to universal, to extend some vulnerability in hopes it can be returned to me. I tell my son he has drawn a vivid picture, with a storyline that I loved to read one day. “Could I put this on my desk so I can look at it today while I work?” I ask. “No mommy this is mine,” he responds. Fair. His work is precious to him.

As we say in class, “I just want to write according to my lived experience.” We try to justify our art, to help the reader make sense of it. We welcome each other into our personal worlds and then justify the world we created for ourselves, for the sake of our individual survivals. Sometimes I feel resentful for all the ways I am learning the technicalities of the essay: what to give the reader, where to release tension, when to give them a break, where to expand, where to withhold, pacing the narrative arc, ending with resolution, or not ending with resolution. I don’t want to learn so many technicalities; I still want to convey things my way. But I also want to write a book that could someday live on bookshelves. Where is the balance? What do I have to sacrifice for my writing to expand? How do I turn all this self-exposure into art that people want to read? I just want to show myself all that I can do. So, begrudgingly, I practice craft, and continue to learn from the masters: Baldwin, Sontag, D’Ambrosio, Lorde.

One of my best friends is getting married in two weeks! It’s a destination wedding, and all four of us will be going. I’m a bridesmaid, and I look forward to relishing in all those duties. I’m excited to be with her on her wedding day, with all her other ‘maids, getting hair and makeup done together, chit chatting, drinking champagne. Just girls being girls. I look forward for the boys having some sunshine and pool time, too. I’m happy to be able to escape this weather soon, to stop staring out my window like a pensive Kermit.

I just heard faint screams from the kitchen so I had to get up to find my eldest has fallen onto the floor of the pantry. I had put the bag of marshmallows on the highest shelf, and he decided to climb up there to get it, unsuccessfully. He has a booboo on his butt, he says. This warrants him to have more marshmallows, he says. I have no choice but to adhere to his requests. I have more thoughts that need to be wrapped up, so I hand him a few and come back to the desk.

When I look out into the snow, I try to give myself grace. I don’t know if it’s the weather but, I can’t figure out whether my feelings have consumed me or if they’ve left me altogether. I must let the writing come, and craft will hopefully follow. My six-year-old loves to say “I am the boss of myself!” and I admire his autonomy. It leads me to ask myself, what am I the boss of, exactly? I don’t know how much control I have over the way these words are stitched together. Yet I let them come. I surrender to their determination to be here. This is my version of gathering the world. By my gathering, I trust, authority will follow. By looking out into the snow, the container for all my varied meanderings, I can also see, in the distance of my mind, green grass. If I am expected to absorb the world, then the world can expect to absorb me.

We can tolerate each other. Better yet, we can absorb each other and help each other grow.