Singularity

Several Christmases ago, several of my grandmother's college friends came over after dinner and sat and cackled for several hours. This was not a tradition. We knew they had made the special holiday trip that evening as it was the first Christmas after my grandfather had passed away, and his absence was felt like a circus with no clowns. So my grandmother's friends came and played the clowns and their wry cackles served to deafen any moans of grief that Christmas. My grandmother, who is only funny in that she is so overbearing it becomes a comical shtick, has the funniest friends on earth. They stay up late and party. They bust balls. They sneak into each other's bathrooms and come out to the party in each other's bathrobes. They have been there for my grandmother in a way that any widow would be grateful for, but sometimes I wonder if their kind company says something bigger about dependency, about singularity, maybe about me. ***

Since our wedding two years ago, two of my dear girlfriends have fallen out of touch with me. I have called, e-mailed, extended invitations to dinner parties. I have self-examined, I have grieved and I have prayed. This was not the way it was supposed to go. I was the first of my close high school, college, and Boston friends to get married. I had vowed to keep in close touch with these dear friends, lest I give them reason to believe that I was too busy having wild married jungle sex to keep up with them. I have made an effort to stay in the loop, even when I have felt like my brain and heart were suddenly split in half, having to stay in my husband's sphere of activity, as well. But these dearhearts have drifted. We are now incommunicado for reasons I do not understand. I am powerless to change the situation, and yet I am plagued with a deep sense of loss over my inability to entice these friends back into my proverbial tea party of friendship.

One day, maybe sooner than I think, I may find myself a widow. John may die before I do. I am not obsessed with this harsh possibility, but I do think about it every time I let John pump my bike tires for me, or I realize that he is my newsfeed on current events for the week. I do not consider us co-dependent. In fact, I am still working to need him more. Sometimes I want to pace the room a few times and make sense of my dilemma - my dilemma - before I let him catch wind of my deliberations. And he, well, he has need of me all the time, but sometimes I do not realize that my sitting next to him on the futon, my feet propped on his lap, laughing at "Bernie Mac" re-runs is fulfilling a need for him. The need to be doing nothing, which is actually something very meaningful, with one's love.

***

I wonder for which of my friends I will serve as widow support. I wonder which of my friends I will be wrapping my feet in baggies for, stuffing my feet into boots for, heading out into the cold on Christmas night for, just two months after the loss of their spouse. I wonder which friends would be my widow support, and if I am loving them well enough now that there would be no need for special widow resuscitation. Am I loving my friends well enough now that their visits and gifts of laughter one Christmas day in the future would not seem novel, would not seem motivated by pity. Am I dependent enough upon myself that the loss of both my husband and friends in the future would only have me in a bathrobe if I had stolen it from someone else's bathroom at a party?

Not So Far Off

Like every girl I know, my sister and I played a great deal of office and school when we were younger, particularly on days off from school or during summer vacation because we couldn't get enough of that work-a-day setting. Most of the material we used was from the previous school year's religious text, since we were Catholic schoolies and got to keep our "This is Our Faith" workbooks. We would play school and office for hours, usually until my sister, who was one of my students or employees, would plead that she hadn't learned this kind of multiplication yet and therefore could not be graded fairly/perform the necessary duties.

Sometimes we decided that the teacher/pupil setting was too restrictive and we changed venues. Inspired by the show "A Different World" which portrayed the fictitious Historically Black College "Hillmon," we constructed a dorm life setting which we thought was possibly the coolest thing that ever came to be in our basement. One thing I have divulged to other friends - much to my chagrin - is that the main component of playing College Life was the use of our Trapper Keeper. There was only one for the two of us, one purple striped extra large soft binder with a picture of a neon magenta heart on both sides which TP and I used interchangeably for our homework, for our sticker album, for inserting all of the fake papers that we were given at fake school or fake work. The Trapper Keeper symbolized for us what we thought College must be like. Living life in purple and neon magenta, cramming everything good into one big soft binder. What more did one need? We would play College for hours, usually until TP would hoard the Trapper Keeper too long, taking notes in her lecture halls and all, and then I would manipulate her to give it to me so that I could organize all of my stickers within the Trapper Keeper, because, let's be honest, that is what happened on a typical day in college.

I should also mention that I was playing school with my friend Micky well up until 8th grade, and it is possible that our prized pupils included Cabbage Patch Dolls and Magic Eat n' Poop Baby. We were very age appropriate.

But besides the totally 80s school supplies and the inclusion of mute pupils with pacifiers, I have reason to believe, nay, proof that we were not so far off. Our notions of what a workplace was like and what a setting where school and life are blended were not so far-fetched. There have been plenty of moments in my own education and work in which I felt as though I had not yet learned this fancy multiplication table, and therefore, I was irreparably useless that day, since there was no going back. I would simply have to plead I never learned that and hope that my ignorance would cloak me with innocence for a day. The set-up that we used to play office, with the IN and OUT trays - that totally exists in just about every workplace. Only the "Super Job!" stickers that TP and I would brand all of our work assignments are disappointingly not used in day to day operations. There was also no time in college where my mom called me upstairs for a grilled cheese sandwich, nor where I could decide in the middle of a workday to go take a nap on the couch.

Sometimes I still wish I had that Trapper Keeper, though. I could fill it with all of my work papers and top them off with a Super Job! sticker and no one would ever know.

Glenbay Daycare Center

From the time my family moved to the Tony Suburb of White People and Labrador Retrievers until the time that my mother had my brother and stayed home full-time, my sister and I went to Glenview Day Care Center. We loved Glenview Daycare Center. Their blocks were way better than the ones we had at home. It was more fun to watch "Charles in Charge" with your friends at daycare than it was just with your sister and some string cheese at home. I do remember sometimes the snacks at Glenview were mediocre, like pishaw to your 2 graham crackers and Dixie cup of apple juice, I just spent all day learning how to write in cursive and how to play four square and how to carry the 1 and you expect me to eat this birdseed? But these things were easily forgiven in light of the rad field trips, and easily forgotten after an intense game of SPUD. We loved the classroom directors who went by Miss Cindy and Miss Carol, even though they were married and not to mention grandmothers seven times over. We loved our friends at Glenview, and this may very well have been my parents' strategic attempt to ensure some facetime with the pubbies, being that they sent us to Catholic school for 12 years and knew we needed a healthy dose of "diversity" so that we could learn how to properly wear jams and realize that the world was much bigger than just white kids who went to Catholic school. There were also white kids who went to Presbyterian Sunday School.

Our grandfather, Rollie, would always wax poetic about his granddaughters' love for Glenview. Only my grandfather, who was quick-witted, but sometimes forgetful of details, would always refer to how much we loved our time at GlenBAY. Glenbay, you may be interested to know, is a drug and alcohol rehabilitative center, serving the greater Cleveland area.

"Oh yeah, they LOVE Glenbay," Rollie would say to his neighbors at the condo complex, "Absolutely love it. They're both really doing well there, you know, they really keep 'em in line. How old are my granddaughters? Oh, why, I guess they're five and seven. How long do I expect 'em to stay? Why, can't say I know. I guess 'til their mother pulls them out of there."