Clutz

I was the cautious child, always the one to tiptoe, tread carefully, mind myself. I desired above all things to avoid getting physically hurt. My parents, spellbound by the "get rich" of real estate, flipped houses and therefore my playground as a child was a construction zone.

Being careful was the crux of everything we were taught. I was good at learning from other's mistakes, notably those of my siblings. I learned when my sister mistook discarded isolation for a misplaced duvet and rolled around in it, unaware of the head to toe rash she would incur. I learned when she yanked the hose off of the shop vac and experienced first hand the degree of heinous compounds that live within a wet dry vacuum. I learned when we watched an electric burner fade from glowing red to an innocuous black and falsely assumed it coolness with the palm of her hand.

There were still casualties. The back deck, newly finished and slick with rain. Without the level-headed hesitation I was known for, I peeled out onto the gleaming surface, quickly lost my balance and went right off the staircase, bumping each step on the way down. Playing tag through my mother's vegetable garden, already begrudgingly tended with a black thumb, I crunched down upon two consecutive planter markers, the feeble wood crunching to splinters beneath the skin of my sole.

As I grew, my clumsiness grew a greater identity in my life. At the time, which proved convenient for my self-esteem, it was thought to be the unfortunate outcome of puberty. My fingertips were slightly longer than they used to be, or that I assumed they were. I was slightly taller than I used to be. My hips wider, my toes more wayward. It felt as though I was literally daily standing up into something, bumping another off a tabletop, stubbing my toe, chipping my nails. I inspected the bruises of mistaken girth and the bumps of lack of care on a daily basis. It was assumed that I would grow out of it. That consolation was the only carrot dangling in front of my easily embarrassed frame of mind.

I became inordinately careful, hesitant. Never volunteering, under constant fear of embarrassment at the inevitable tripping, falling, misjudging of distance.

People stopped describing me as awkward, gangly, clumsy. It wasn't to say that I wasn't. But I just did a better job at hiding it. The majority of my cognitive energy was spent on appearing in control, effortless. It was anything but.

There was this creeping, persistent realization, just beyond my vision like a shadow or an impending  peripheral shot, that as much as I had tried to curb my clumsiness by hiding it, it hadn't disappeared but had rather been waiting with increasing impatience to reemerge with greater strength. It had been unsupervised and had, in that time, positioned itself poised to act.

I began to relax, somehow convincing myself that the elegant track record that I had personally engineered was enough to prove to myself I didn't need to be so careful. Unfortunately, this choice came at the time when I was graduating high school, exiting the sphere of a dependant, venturing out on my own. My first year of university, which I intended to be steadfast and elegant, emerging from my chrysalis a resplendent butterfly. The adage goes, "Sharks are born swimming" and I held that as the intent I was going to manifest.

Turns out I was born more like a calf, the eclipse of night with the crest of the sunrise still hours away, in the chill, slipping on my own afterbirth. Not a day of my first year of university went by without me being late for at least one of my classes, and by no less than fifteen minutes. I fell down stairs, rather publicly. I lost textbooks. I ran out of gas on the highway.

I stared out upon the expanse of the adult life that lay before me, knowing -hoping- that it could be different. I held it close to me, like a dirty secret. Tripping up stairs, forgetting to pay my bills on time, thus far I COULD keep it to myself.

Perhaps it was something karmic, trying to force change. Or maybe it was just grow up time.

The 'being able to hide it' abruptly ended. I fell in love, I married, I moved in. The breaking of mirrors, the shattering of glassware, the mishandling of my bills, being late and/or disorganized threw my marriage for a loop. I was not the wife I wanted to be. I was not the wife my husband expected. They were not simply my things, they were our things. It was not simply "no big deal" anymore. It became "this is why we can't have nice things".

Despite my best efforts, I sit here now, staring at the glass closet door that I had previously commented on, upon moving in to our new home, as to how much I liked them. I stare at a web of shatters that cluster in chaos at the base and climb higher upwards along the border all the way to the top.

Six years later.

Rage

I was crouched, half undressed, in the dank, yellowing light of my laundry room. I was fighting the simultaneous urge to scream, to cry and to give myself a good slap across the cheek.

I had been an asshole.

The combination of my mother's Swedish hard-headedness and unbridled French temper of my father that made me on the benign end, very dogmatic and convicted yet passionate and perseverant and on the malevolent end, malicious, manipulative and unwilling to admit wrongdoing. I had been representing, unfortunately, the rougher end of the scale in recent days.

In short, it had been a long day.

I would never diminish any career that a person would take to in a time of career confusion. Anything to keep moving and to avoid the magnetic inertia of confusion, I admire that. But there is something very different about the internal writhing of questioning one's identity and life's purpose while you stock shelves at Target.

Integral to the structure and functioning of concrete hoarding is dragging heavy insulated tarps across construction sites, said tarps snagging on cribbing nails, tripping on rogue rebar, jamming up hammer tackers, scaling foundation forms bundled with tarps like a Sherpa. It is a job that would test even the most centred and long-suffering among us. So when you already have an edge that seems to be sharpened by the daily frustrations of ruminating on things just not going according to friggin plan, tensions compound exponentially.

In marriage, it is impossible to protect your spouse from the rough edges of your personality. By virtue of them being your spouse, they are inducted into an unmitigated inner sanctum of your heart, mind and personality. When you are at your best, you are inspired by your love for them and by the profundity and surreal nature of having someone commit to you their life. It is transcendent and subsequently even the occurrences of the day to day become imbued with something...more. You try to be more careful, you give even the slightest things more thought.

But life inevitably creeps in. All of the effort you put into your spouse and you marriage takes more effort now because there is one more ball in the air. And your spouse is your spouse. You vow to do life together, part of which entails waking up on the wrong side of the bed, being impatient, having road rage, having idiosyncrasies -such as the lines on the tea towels need to be perpendicular to the floor not parallel- among other things. And that is not even counting all of the times that you will legitimately let your partner down and they will be justifiably upset.

I had stomped my way through the majority of my day. I had made the familiar excuses of "I was frustrated by the tarps catching", "I bumped my shin", "I hit my head", "I slipped on the tarps", "I fell off the ramp because the tarp caught" or any other manner of ridiculous things that could have befell me to knock myself off of my reasoned, rational, perseverant horse. I will mentioned that I never offered up any of those reasons without a healthy seasoning of expletives.

I had reasoned and rationed my way through the arguments above many times on site, especially when I was curt or rude to my husband.
"I do a very stressful job and I'm not at a good place in my head and I don't get enough sleep and..."
And. And. And.

Truth was I could be a Shithead with a capital "S".

I didn't remember my parents ever fighting. They were not the yelling, screaming, plate-throwing pyrotechnics fighters. When people with divorced parents talked about "seeing it coming", I could never relate.
I do remember the excruciating tension. They were the stomping, huffing, silent treatment, turn-your-anger-into-cancer fighters. It was a festering wound.
The stubborness and short temper combined made for a potentially explosive match in the first place. And then the pride and indignance of feeling let down scraped at that sore spot, chafing it into a blister that never healed.

Pride is a funny beast. It can function very articulately without needing to be fed actively. It can go for weeks, months, years living on one small injustice. While some would describe pride as a monstrous beast, heavy and fat, I think of it more as lean, wiry, like smoke. The smell never goes away and constantly fills your mind with memories of fire.

It was my pride that ricocheted around in my head during the day. Whenever I took out hating my job and wishing I had a different set of decisions ahead of me out on my husband, it was my pride that told me I didn't need to apologize, that I was justified in being in a bad mood and "he should just understand". That smoke began to blanket our encounters, fill the rooms of our house, the space between our mouths when we would talk.

It had been the stomping, huffing, crest of tears kind of day. It had also been day of the secondary guilt of knowing I'm being a shrew but having already wound up the gyroscope so far that to slow it down from its motion would cause it to fall. I had been spinning all day. I had to keep it spinning or wait for the nausea to set in.

"You should go have a shower." His voice was tight and it jolted me.
"I had a bad day."
There was a pause.
"I'm sorry.
Another pause. "It's okay. Go have a shower."
It was not the voice of forgiveness, it was not the voice of tenderness. But it was the voice of reality. It was a tone of wear and tear, not only from me but from life. It was the tone of "tomorrow is a new day".

I pulled the rest of my clothes off, each piece powdered with a film of concrete dust. The thought of a hot shower and a cold glass of water drew me upstairs, of sinking into a pillow that would lead me to believe this day could be forgotten.
The smoke within me was cooling and I coughed it out best I could in the humidity and steam. Slipping beneath the covers, there was something about my lineage that unnerved me. It was seeing the worst of both of them in myself at once. The stillness of the moment, awaiting the coming sleep, I realized I was too many rungs up the ladder to simply jump down and to climb higher felt dangerous and far too easy.

My Mother's Daughter

I tried to suppress the guilt I felt at my husband giving me the day off from the construction work we did together. I was having a spa day with my mom. She was an aesthetician, and a good one at that. It was my birthday and so she had scheduled me in on her day off. What awaited me was an interrupted day of services.  

"Your mom and I planned this last week. Have a good time today. Don't think about work." 

And so he went out in the dark, early morning chill of the winter month. I relished in not having to think about work, about the job I did because I needed the money, about the work I did because I really didn't know what else to do with my life, about easily the hardest work I had ever done period.  

My shower lasted longer than four and a half minutes (I had timed myself), I drank coffee out of something other than my Stanley travel mug, and my wardrobe choice for the day didn't include snow pants. They were creature comforts that I liked to think I didn't need to get through a day but there was something about the meditation (and the rarity) of my process today that shifted the banal and every day into a guilty pleasure. 

~ ~ ~ 

Her hands waved above me, a therapeutic mist resting down upon my face.  I felt her smooth fingertips upon my forehead as she gently smoothed out my frown lines. My eyes welled with tears, which I hoped she could not see in the dim light of that spa room, only because I didn't know how to explain them.

Part of it was simply tenderness. In a time and space in my life when creature comforts and pampering made up the minority of my thought process and certainly my time, having a day off where my skin was massaged, calming music was played, no grunting or gritting my teeth was necessary felt so good and yet so foreign, I could cry. Part of it was also, despite it being the very day I turned a year older and shouldn't have needed it so much, I sometimes just needed my mom. The bad days I had as a kid, as a teen, as a young woman, she would make us some tea and paint my nails as I tried to make sense of my mind and heart. She would rub my back or feet with scented lotion and tell me stories that would make me laugh. 

I was confused in life. I was disappointed, in my self and in my circumstances. I had made decisions I regretted and the only consolation to those feelings was to absorb them and move on. No fixing could happen. I couldn't go back. I couldn't change what I had done or hadn't done. 

The pungency of something like brandy sparked my nostrils. "What was that?"
"Toner."
"It smells like brandy." I smiled.
"The one for oily skin smells like tequila."
"I am glad I have dry to norma then."
I heard her smirk, that familiar sound that painted the look on her face without needing to see it.  
"Now relax." 
Stop talking is what that meant, and I was grateful for it. 
"From now on I am going to treat you like a client." She smoothed out my brow again. "And it's considered a compliment to fall asleep." 

Nearly an hour of repeated lotions and face masks, cleansing steam and more brandy scented lotion, I nearly did fall asleep. I sleepily pulled on the robe and clumsily stuffed my feet back into the disposable slippers to meet my mom out at the fireside. She was chatting with another client who was seated in front of the fireplace with a tea and a magazine. As I approached, another client was ushered into the spa area and greeted my mother by name. 

I felt an impromptu, inalienable pride in that moment. My mother was a professional. She was amazing at her job, not only in technique but in also -and to me more importantly- in conduct. She was the epitome of grace and tenderness but with a reservation that was both unfamiliar to me and absolutely part of her draw. I was used to the mom who would squeal and gab, gossip and swoon with me. In this moment, when I was wrapped in a fancy white robe, plushy lipped and giggly with two glasses of wine, my mother had her name on the wall in awards and accreditations, clients who frequented the spa for her touch alone. 

She filled my glass again with wine and sat me down at her manicure table. 
"Your skin looks great," she said as she set up her tools. "I use a magnifying light in the facial and your skin looks amazing."
"I have you to thank for that. Can't take credit for good genetics." 
"What do you use on your skin." 
"Apricot scrub." 
She grimaced. "How often?"
"Every day." 
Her eyes pinched shut, her nose scrunched. "Every day." 
I couldn't help but laugh. "What? I'm not supposed to scrub my face with a paste of crushed walnut shells? Sounds actually kind of primeval when I say it like that." 
"We can do better." She smiled back. She took my hands in hers, studying my nails. 
Even from the other side of the table, I could see the similarities in our hands. Though my fingers were longer, my fingers had the same crooked fingers and knuckles. I had seen those same fingers on my mother's mother, and her mother as well. My sisters had those hands and likely the daughters that came after us would have them too. They were the hands that I had grimaced at my entire adolescence and one of the first things my husband had told me he loved about me, long before he knew me or even knew my hands. 

After soaking my fingertips, my mother made quick work of transforming the dried cuticles and chipped nails that I had come in which. I almost could have called them smooth, all the credit of which would go to my mother's handiwork. She asked me about work, about my marriage and my writing. I told her honestly -because all my defenses had fallen two glasses of wine ago. I did my best not to cry because I didn't want her to feel bad for me, or to activate her maternal guilt and worry but also because I wasn't sad. I was under the influence of melancholy spa music and in the throes of much needed girl time, mother-daughter time. Nostalgia had flooded me and I was still reeling from it's heady effects.

She handed me the array of nail color chips to choose from. I chose something that I thought befit a 26-year-old. Not flashy or tacky, but hopefully elegant and refined. I had always been her daughter that tried to hard, that thought too much about simple things, who overanalyzed and picked apart, and stressed out and wore myself out. 

She helped me put my boots on so as not to ding my freshly done nails. We laughed about how long it had been since she had to do that and she confessed she has to help her clients do up their jackets and shoes all the time. 

I walked with my hands in front of me, fingers splayed apart, grabbing the car door and my purse with concerted dexterity for my nails best interest, full well knowing that the next day I would destroy the polish and my hands again when I went back to work.

We gabbed more in the car as she drove me home but I never quite recovered from the melancholia I caught. Nostalgia and the gripping reality that I had grown and changed in many ways and in some ways I hadn't at all. Once home, I collapsed onto the couch and descended into a slumber that my entire afternoon had been preparing me for.  

When my husband got home, upon his clothes and face was the dust and grime of concrete that was so familiar. How was his day, how had work been. 
"A light day," he said and I was relieved. "How was the spa?"
Glancing down at my nails, I saw that the texture from the couch had pressed into the impressionable polish, a delicate cross hatching. 
"It was exactly what I needed."