of dislocation & graceful unravelling

explodingdog:

I know I screwed up
New drawings at Explodingdog.com

“Etymologically, the French word dénouement is derived from the Old French word denoer, ‘to untie’, and from nodus, Latin for ‘knot.’ Simply put, dénouement is the unraveling or untying of the complexities of a plot.” (via WikiPedia).
I had been talking with C. about the feeling of needing a sense of resolution, how I wished, half-jokingly, that there was some kind of Relationship Vision Quest we might take that would create a symbol & pin down a specific date & place for Deciding to Stick Together Despite Everything. Maybe we could walk across the suspension bridge at Tallulah Gorge?
I guess I should consider myself lucky to come from a non-dysfunctional family. I have always looked to my parents’ marriage (30 years this October) as the ideal, and not because of any epic tales of romance, but because they fold the clean bedsheets together, as a team, and do not need to instruct each other — the motions are automatic and result in perfectly-folded linens. Daddy cooks, ‘cos Mommy is notorious for burning a pot of boiling water. Mommy is more organizational and has always been in charge of the finances. That’s all — it’s just a given. After dinner they have Grown-Up Talking Time over coffee and cigarettes. They seem to have totally accepted one another. Mommy makes sarcastic jabs at Daddy’s grumpiness, but she knows he’s tender in that weird masculine way — he raised us to be tough. We’d fall off our bikes and come crying with scraped knees; he’d say, “you’ll live,” and then play connect-the-dots with iodine on our legs. & Daddy would sometimes nag at Mommy for being passive — at her old office job, she would come home with tales of glass ceilings and sex/gender-based discrimination (I believe she was one of only three women at her job, and possibly the only one who wasn’t a secretary) — but he encouraged her to be forthright and stand up for herself. I only recall them ever noticeably arguing once, and I think it was about finances, when I was very young, so probably still within those first, supposedly most difficult, years of marriage.
My maternal grandparents were similar, I think, in that subtle expression of mutual love that was simply a given — no need for dramatic proofs. But it was dramatic, in its mythological way, towards the end. Pap’s mind began to deteriorate, and Grandma was stubborn and didn’t want to put him in a nursing home, partly because she was afraid it would be so expensive that they would end up taking the house which they owned and wanted to keep in the family (my parents live there now). Grandma took care of him, and she was so prideful that she would rarely call for help. Once, I remember, he fell in the bathtub and she tried for hours to help him up. My aunt showed up for a visit and found them as such, scolded Grandma for not calling as she lives right down the street. Grandma died of a brain aneurysm. They said it was the stress, that she pushed herself too hard. I was told that she had a headache and was going to the medicine cabinet for aspirin when it hit her; she collapsed and cracked her skull. They let me see the body in the hospital and she looked like a tiny bird, tinier even then her already short and curled stature, with skin yellowed like aged newsprint. At the funeral, Pap kept forgetting that she had died. He kept asking, “Where’s Eloise? When is she getting here?” and someone would have to wheel him in his chair over to the casket and explain that she had passed away, and each time he would weep because each time for him was the first time he had been told. & here was this man in his 80’s, who had fought in WWII and never talked about it; this man whose only outward expression of emotion was to call my brother, the only boychild, by his Polish name, Stashu — he sobbed like a child. He died exactly one year, one month, and one day after Grandma.
C. & I only have four years together, but four years is the longest of my long-term commitments. We got through the passionate part where we think each other is a goddamn myth on a pedestal, and we got through the selfish part where we nitpick and want to change everything about each other, and we got through a lot more shit in between, and I’ve no more experience beyond that. PW told me that eventually in a relationship, you get to this point where Despite Everything you realize that this is a person who has stuck by you and you may never know somebody as deeply and intimately as that again. Or at the very least, that’s not the kind of thing you can just go out and pick up at the bar one night. Sometimes it’s all the terrible parts that bring you together, that teach you a bit of acceptance and understanding, ‘cos underneath all that shit is a person who hasn’t given up on you when you’ve seen each other at your absolute worst.

I know I screwed up

New drawings at Explodingdog.com

“Etymologically, the French word dénouement is derived from the Old French word denoer, ‘to untie’, and from nodus, Latin for ‘knot.’ Simply put, dénouement is the unraveling or untying of the complexities of a plot.” (via WikiPedia).

I had been talking with C. about the feeling of needing a sense of resolution, how I wished, half-jokingly, that there was some kind of Relationship Vision Quest we might take that would create a symbol & pin down a specific date & place for Deciding to Stick Together Despite Everything. Maybe we could walk across the suspension bridge at Tallulah Gorge?

I guess I should consider myself lucky to come from a non-dysfunctional family. I have always looked to my parents’ marriage (30 years this October) as the ideal, and not because of any epic tales of romance, but because they fold the clean bedsheets together, as a team, and do not need to instruct each other — the motions are automatic and result in perfectly-folded linens. Daddy cooks, ‘cos Mommy is notorious for burning a pot of boiling water. Mommy is more organizational and has always been in charge of the finances. That’s all — it’s just a given. After dinner they have Grown-Up Talking Time over coffee and cigarettes. They seem to have totally accepted one another. Mommy makes sarcastic jabs at Daddy’s grumpiness, but she knows he’s tender in that weird masculine way — he raised us to be tough. We’d fall off our bikes and come crying with scraped knees; he’d say, “you’ll live,” and then play connect-the-dots with iodine on our legs. & Daddy would sometimes nag at Mommy for being passive — at her old office job, she would come home with tales of glass ceilings and sex/gender-based discrimination (I believe she was one of only three women at her job, and possibly the only one who wasn’t a secretary) — but he encouraged her to be forthright and stand up for herself. I only recall them ever noticeably arguing once, and I think it was about finances, when I was very young, so probably still within those first, supposedly most difficult, years of marriage.

My maternal grandparents were similar, I think, in that subtle expression of mutual love that was simply a given — no need for dramatic proofs. But it was dramatic, in its mythological way, towards the end. Pap’s mind began to deteriorate, and Grandma was stubborn and didn’t want to put him in a nursing home, partly because she was afraid it would be so expensive that they would end up taking the house which they owned and wanted to keep in the family (my parents live there now). Grandma took care of him, and she was so prideful that she would rarely call for help. Once, I remember, he fell in the bathtub and she tried for hours to help him up. My aunt showed up for a visit and found them as such, scolded Grandma for not calling as she lives right down the street. Grandma died of a brain aneurysm. They said it was the stress, that she pushed herself too hard. I was told that she had a headache and was going to the medicine cabinet for aspirin when it hit her; she collapsed and cracked her skull. They let me see the body in the hospital and she looked like a tiny bird, tinier even then her already short and curled stature, with skin yellowed like aged newsprint. At the funeral, Pap kept forgetting that she had died. He kept asking, “Where’s Eloise? When is she getting here?” and someone would have to wheel him in his chair over to the casket and explain that she had passed away, and each time he would weep because each time for him was the first time he had been told. & here was this man in his 80’s, who had fought in WWII and never talked about it; this man whose only outward expression of emotion was to call my brother, the only boychild, by his Polish name, Stashu — he sobbed like a child. He died exactly one year, one month, and one day after Grandma.

C. & I only have four years together, but four years is the longest of my long-term commitments. We got through the passionate part where we think each other is a goddamn myth on a pedestal, and we got through the selfish part where we nitpick and want to change everything about each other, and we got through a lot more shit in between, and I’ve no more experience beyond that. PW told me that eventually in a relationship, you get to this point where Despite Everything you realize that this is a person who has stuck by you and you may never know somebody as deeply and intimately as that again. Or at the very least, that’s not the kind of thing you can just go out and pick up at the bar one night. Sometimes it’s all the terrible parts that bring you together, that teach you a bit of acceptance and understanding, ‘cos underneath all that shit is a person who hasn’t given up on you when you’ve seen each other at your absolute worst.

of dislocation & graceful unravelling

peripatetic (ramble)