notes from my childhood home 2/18
im waiting for my sister to wake up. she’s always been like this, slow to rise, in bed until noon. ive always been the opposite, so eager for the day, especialy the time of day when no one else is awake & i get to trounce around unobserved. when the light is gentle, refracted in the wet grass. i was born in the morning.
im at my parents’ house, the house i mostly grew up in, where my sister now temporarily lives. she’s finishing up school to be a physician’s assistant. we’re going to look through dozens of boxes of old photos in the basement together. maybe to see if there are some we can get rid of? my parents live in florida now and this house is in limbo, likely to be sold in the next few years. it seems impossible, to throw away childhood photos, but what would we do with a wall full of boxes when the house is sold? i have a small apartment, and even if i didn’t, the boxes would just relinquish in some other dark corner.
im bracing myself for encountering these images. last time i was here i briefly thumbed through the boxes and it was too much—slipping through portals into decades ago, seeing faces of old friends and family now dead, remembering a world where people read magazines instead of phone screens. feeling so close to these people, these worlds, smelling them, hearing them, desperate to enter them but of course being barred from doing so. forever. thinking of barthes in camera lucida, staring at the picture of his mother, at times so overcome with love & feeling, other times thinking: who the fuck is this woman?
grief compiles. some of us sink under its weight while others are able to hold it all with their mounting strength. i want to be strong enough to sit with the grief of time passing, my life crumbling away from me. i want to collaborate with this grief, to honor who i’ve been while welcoming the new, rebuilding myself willingly, excitedly. my parents’ laundry machine just dinged, time to put in a new load.
on the kitchen table is a book called “jesus is calling.” my sister wears a cross necklace. she’s almost 29. i began to return to my spirituality around that age, too, although for me that meant reading tarot cards, studying astrology.
my sister is newly sober too. last night i dreamt some invisible force was yanking my ankle, trying to drag me underground. i screamed for my mother. the last time i felt that sensation i was out of my mind high. so high i couldn’t open my eyes. i made francis sit beside me for hours in bed while i just tried to breathe. i’d eaten edibles mom made, a few weeks after weed became legal in new jersey. sometimes while wicked high i would actually see the devil. i would hallucinate demon faces with sharp yellow teeth and bleeding eyes. but mostly i loved the warm world of being stoned.
sister just came in the door? turns out this whole time, while i’d been creeping around the house, she’d been driving back from philly.