“…he has developed the capacity to simulate deep calm while experiencing none of it. In his core, Mervyn Glass is a frantic man.” –Damon Galgut, The Promise
There are some things you don’t learn, would never suspect, about other people until you are thrown together by life in a way that is more collision than cocktail party; multi-car pileup than Pinterest. And there are similar things you don’t learn and would never suspect about yourself until the same sort of “accidents.”
I have always been able to fake it (ie, live politely in a world that demands constant positivity), but such pretensions lead unfailingly to frustration/anger/quietness/eventual shutdown. I retreat to the more honest part of myself and hang out there until I find the people who will join me and talk about digestive issues or heartbreak or devastating disappointment rather than the weather. This is where I’d always rather be (unless sitting on my own couch alone is an option): digging deeply into the rubble of life’s experience and, sometimes (read: always) being surprised to find hope, and company, there.
Last week I met a couple of friends for lunch on a beach I hadn’t visited since before Covid, and for four hours we sat there, talking about our shared experiences delivered through our quirky kids. Roads, not identical but close enough, that we never expected to walk but on which we found each other. And this is what I’ve never stopped finding to be true: that there are people I never would have known were it not for the things I never would have chosen. And people I did know, but came to know in an entirely new way.
Mark that for the “This Is Everything” pile.
Tomorrow (though when this posts, it will be yesterday), The Kid goes to a two-night sleep away camp with years five and six from his school. They’ll stay in cabins and bring sleeping bags and eat camp food on their own mess kits and it is all just too much for me. (Don’t ask about my digestive issues in response.) Two friends–mothers of their own quirky kids–and I will be renting an airbnb nearby in case we are needed, because we know how things like this can either end triumphantly or go tits-up within minutes. My face looks calm but my entire body is a live wire, but then I sat down this morning and read this:
“He is not simply telling us to get over our worry. He is reminding us of the way the world actually works. Worry and anxiety take us out of our present moment and into a world that does not exist. When we worry, we put our feet on the shaky ground of a future (or past) constructed in our own mind.”
I have definitely done some world-building through worry. But…
The other day, Little Brother was asking if other countries besides the US have Independence Day holidays–he was trying to equate that with Australia Day (which is…not accurate? And also, kinda problematic). When I explained to him how America came to have an Independence Day to celebrate, light dawned on his face and he said, “So you don’t get to have one unless you weren’t free and then you are?”
There’s so much there. So much that you don’t get to have unless you were first not who/where you are now.
After I dropped the kids at school this morning (complete with a pre-camp rundown with TK’s teacher), I headed to the beach and stuffed myself into my wetsuit. The pain of the first minutes gave way to the rhythm of my strokes which gave way to a series of waves that upset that rhythm. I gazed downward toward the sandy floor that never moves because I did not create it, and kept swimming until I reached the end: the end of one small story held in a bigger one whose ultimate ending is kept safe no matter what.