2 journal entries
JOURNAL 1: I woke up at 6:30am to my alarm, I actually woke up at 5:30am because one cat was digging inside the blankets and the other cat was doing this retching sound she does when her stomach is empty. If it were up to me, the bedroom door would be closed. Later, while D and I ate breakfast, the digging cat was hiding underneath the coffee table, as if she knew I would be leaving town. I crouched on all fours to look at her, to make sure she wasn’t dead. I had never seen her sit so still, her feet sticking out of the shadow.
The st. louis airport always goes quicker than you think it will. The TSA was easy. I sat down at my terminal with 1.5 hours to spare. I stared at my phone and watched the people around me, who were also about to board a plane to new york. A woman my age with round glasses and a plaid blazer coat that I was jealous of. A couple of normal blondes, one wearing a Cardinal’s hat. A singular older woman wearing a cloth mask who had gone in front of me in TSA security and had complimented the new technology.
I boarded the plane and sat next to a teen. It was the back of the plane, by the bathroom and a little seat where the flight attendant sits and stares at nothing, or maybe there is a screen back there, and prepares the little sodas on the cart. The flight attendant was a blonde man with an accent, maybe Russian. I stared at his eyelashes and thought he was wearing mascara. He called the teen “sir” when serving us Sprites and pretzels. Later, the teen and I would go to the bathrooms at LaGuardia, both headed into the women’s side. Her backpack said “women’s basketball.” She had a blonde bowl cut just like the flight attendant. The whole flight, I read my book about nuns. I even listened to the book on audiobook and read the physical novel at the same time. The old lady across the aisle asked me what my book was about as we were standing up at the end, putting on our coats. It’s a book about nuns, I said. Is it a mystery? No, I guess it’s a drama.
In the Uber on the way to my cousin’s house, I looked at my phone and stared out the window. I was really car sick. The radio was playing Drake. I looked at the NYC neighborhoods but didn’t think anything of it, it could never compare to the first time I had ever driven into the city in my life: I was 17, on tour with my sister’s band, about to play a show in Brooklyn. We drove past the brownstone houses on the highway, and I looked down and saw a birthday party in a street, or maybe it was a quinceanera, I saw kids running, I saw pink streamers.
I had never been to my cousin’s apartment before, even though she has lived in it for 7 years. I haven’t been to NYC in 7 years. I love the pink tiles in the bathroom and the dark green speckled countertops. I am sitting in the room now in the back, which is her office with our Grandpa’s stained glass bug lamp. My ex’s art is hung in between the windows, a spidery bouquet in an ancient looking white vase, contrasted over black paint. The apartment has many pictures of me as a little kid, on the office’s bulletin board, framed in the kitchen, and a framed picture of the cousins on the table in the dining room. I don’t think I have any pictures of my cousin or any of my cousins in my apartment.
C and A picked me up and we drove to a Greek neighborhood. It was already dark and traffic felt dense. Cars are really always honking in NYC, it’s a true stereotype. We sat around a mom and pop Greek place and ordered appetizers and sides, and talked about our parents and Israel. My favorite was the lemon potato wedges. There was calamari, Greek salad, a platter of dips. The waitress was an older Greek woman. The bathroom had dried flowers over a mirror. Lots of Greek older men were in the front half of the room, talking loud. We left, I watched A light a cigarette, and I completed a planned bit of gossip I needed to explain about huge disappointments, if you ask me.
Next we went to Costco. I decided that Costco is alright and they have some nice things. Like a giant jar of olives for six bucks. Or 50 frozen eggrolls for six bucks. We got back to C and A’s loft and had to carry all the heavy Costco food up four flights of stairs. Their loft is really cozy and doubles as their art studio. C showed me something she’s working on, a vintage umbrella with her dad’s wool blanket sewed on top. We drank tea and talked, she showed me the clothes she made for her dog and he modeled them. I had to take a shit all day and finally did in their bathroom. It smelled like shit in the loft. I felt really bad, but my body felt really a lot better. C showed me a wicker chest of medicine. I wondered if I should pay more attention, if I was getting prepared for the weeks ahead, when she will need things if she’s nauseous, having a migraine, or needing to put healing gel over the wound.
They drove me home and I considered how I will borrow her car and drive back and forth. Now I am wondering if I should just take public transportation. I might like that more. My cousin was washing the dishes when I got back. I sat down in the room and instantly read an entire article about shoegaze resurgence. I’m tired now. I’m nervous about tomorrow and the surgery. When C mentioned it will take her awhile to wake up from the anesthesia, I realized I could cry a little. “Taking awhile to wake up from anesthesia” is a concept that has caused me intense grief in my life. I didn’t want to mention that. I don’t want her to feel bad! My trigger is just there, it’ll always be a part of me now.
I want to write more in the new year. I wonder how long I’ve been writing this. I need to convince myself this is good for my health. Maybe it is easier to write because I am alone. I have no one I am thinking about in the room. No cats are digging or gagging. I look ahead out the window of the apartment. I see orange windows in the black house. The warm light behind the thread of a curtain. I want to describe the physical world more. I can see it in my head. I can see it all around me. But I need to choose to really see it and know it. The thread of a hanging plant makes a loop of dark green below the shelf. There’s a mannequin bodice with a white jacket on in the corner, and the pink tutu around the neck that my cousin wore in a music video. The thread of the plant wraps around the lamp.
JOURNAL 2: I couldn’t write yesterday because too much happened. It was the surgery day on the winter solstice. I woke up and walked to C’s apartment in the sun and called H on the phone. She told me all about hanging out with ____, which I thought sucked a lot. I walked through Ridgewood into Bushwick, past so many people and businesses and subway tracks above ground and a park with a playground and path and a little middle part with skateboard ramps. I paced around and talked to H. We did the same thing today, and talked about the same thing, and I looked around at the world on the same path. I thought about how this could be our life, if she moves away, we could be talking on the phone like this in the future.
Yesterday was so much waiting. We got to the hospital at 1pm, waited to go back to sit with C in her hospital gown, and then waited with her in there until 3:30 or 4. We were so hungry. All around the hospital were signs of warnings: warning patients and families to be kind to staff. Warning staff to take precautions for mistakes. I appreciated it all. The anesthesiologist came out and went over everything and started to set up C with her IV port. He was really nice. I didn’t want to be triggered by him. I wanted him to heal me. He had a loose fitting mask over his face, almost like a performance, a mask costume. He discussed the different risks of anesthesia, at the very end mentioning brain injury. “But I’ll be right by your side the entire time,” he said. This care and attention, in his calming voice, made me emotional. I recognized that hurt in me, for the inequality of what my dad experienced, but where does that hurt go except for this page.
The surgery takes a long time, and waking up from surgery takes a long time, so A and I left. We went to the vegetarian Jewish deli. I let him pick out the food items to share: fried blintzes, fried pierogies. We ate matzah ball soup in silence. We took public transportation back to their apartment, checked on on the dog, and sat on our phones for awhile. Because of the lack of food, we both had horrible headaches. I took a big white tylenol and hoped my head would feel more at ease once C was out of surgery and doing ok.
We found out about C’s updates through text, like a food order update: “your patient is ready.” We trekked all the way back and found her sitting up straight in the hospital bed looking almost asleep, but she was talking to us. She said the bra is so tight. She said I’m so small. We were sent away while she got more meds and woke up more. We waited longer on our phones in a “family waiting room”. Then back in the recovery area, we were the only ones left. The nurse taught us how to use the drains and empty them correctly. One surgery doctor had to come back to secure one side of the tubes with tape. We helped C change into her clothes. I slid a sock over each foot. We got into an Uber and held barf bags, but she never barfed. She somehow got up the stairs with no assistance. We arranged the wedge pillow set and the pillows she made out of plaid tablecloth fabric, we watched a movie with Reese Witherspoon, and we ate mini eggrolls from Costco. By the time I Ubered home, it was 1:40am.
This morning I woke up and my cousin had gotten me a bagel. We hung out for a bit, talked about lasagna. I walked over again, like I said before, and I let myself inside C’s building with her keys. Very different from yesterday – I stayed in one place all day. Maybe this is a good indicator of how the rest of the stay will go. We sat in bed together and watched movies all day. Highlights were “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Wristcutters”, and “Showgirls”. For dinner A made cabbage stew. I helped with the drains and she had barely drained out much red liquid. I found the process of squeezing the clear plastic bulbs into the measuring cup kind of fun.
After a while, they kicked me out. I was happy to leave and have some time to myself, and figure out how to take public transportation back to my cousin’s. It was pretty easy. I felt self conscious - can everyone around me can guess I am a Midwestern lost girl staring at google maps? Maybe I blended in a little. Maybe no one is paying attention. I had my knitted bandana scarf wrapped around my head like a bonnet.
I feel concerned because I can’t feel attached to shapes of the walk like magnetic stripes of memory, like I used to when I walked around Shaw neighborhood or Chicago. Maybe I was so focused on walking the right way, I couldn’t really understand the physical surroundings. I am trying to pick out something to describe: walking towards the “L” entrance like a dark triangle leading to a bright hole. The different little delis, restaurants. Someone on the phone across the street talking loud, parallel to me. It was dark and quiet. I can think of other images, but not from this specific walk. I can see the tunnel of the sidewalk in my head, but I don’t know how to retrace it in words, transfer the visual pieces into language pieces.
Now i’m in the couch bed and writing this. Someone is listening to music loud outside and it’s 1:30am. I can’t tell if it’s christmas music or not. I can’t tell if writing this down is helpful or making me more sane. I just want to remember something about this, for whatever reason, it feels important.