The Housewife's Lament #1

This past summer, the first summer of quarantine, I was standing at the sink thinking depressing thoughts during a depressing year. It was the middle of August, and I was taking a "vacation" in quotes, because there was no place to go, and nothing safe to do. Being quarantined, working from home, and not seeing friends or family for months was beginning to take an emotional toll that I was rapidly becoming unable to pay. I could feel misery and depression skulking around as I noticed the days growing shorter. "But you are fortunate" came the unbidden, and surprising, thought. One moment I was sinking into a funk, and the next moment that thought was simply there. Shiny, solid, real, and undeniable. I examined it in my mind, while my hands scrubbed the remains of my morning tea from my cup. "Not to be cliché," it said, "but your blessings are numerous, and you know how to count." And I sat with that a moment while running a soapy dish under the tap. It was true, and right. I thought about being fortunate that I still had a job, and one that let me work remotely. I thought about the fact that I had a house, and wasn't hurting for food. And I thought about all of the couples and families unintentionally confined to close quarters. Children at home, Zoom calls for work, angry spouses on a short fuse, and pets literally crying out for attention. I thought about how a situation like that could bring so much stress to bear on an already fractured relationship to destroy it beyond repair. And my mind kept turning to thoughts of women in unhappy relationships, in an untenable situation with disease plaguing the outside world, but living in a space that is rotting from within. That was the inspiration for the first poem, intended to be from the point of view of that woman, literally trapped in both a house and a relationship. 


Our lives are like our dishes,
chipped and broken 
and glued back together.
Functional but not pretty.

The crack lines showing through like scars,
dirtied and left next to the sink
where the residue of experiences past
will stick and harden
and leave their marks. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Walkthrough Closet

There was a time after college where I lived in an efficiency apartment in a historic building from around 1900. It had a beautiful facade and an open lobby with a visible staircase and one, narrow elevator. The elevator had an old diamond pattern sliding door that you had to manually open and close. The elevator was very slow - about as slow as taking the stairs. It vibrated enough that it would often cause that gate to open a bit, causing the elevator to stop. You learned to hold a foot against the gate after it was jarred loose and stopped you between floors a few times. The halls were narrow, as were the doors. It has steam heat and radiators that would knock loudly, and on cold nights the regulator valve would hiss like an angry snake or dissatisfied theater goer all night long. The single pane, metal sash, casement windows radiated cold in the winter and let bugs in during the summer due to a lack of screens. The single room had a tiny four burner stove with an oven too small for...
Read more

You Survived Another Year of Work

Congratulations! You made it through another year! I would say more, but LinkedIn learning courses have taught me the art of delegation. So, congratulate yourself and take a moment, a one-on-one moment if you will, to really appreciate and praise your accomplishments. While it is impressive that you survived another year, the most impressive part is that you did it as part of a team! Too bad they don’t give out Certificates of Completion for enduring another year, amiright? It doesn’t matter how you did it, it just matters that it’s done. Maybe you survived the year of work through the judicious use of the mute button during meetings. Maybe you had your mouse taped to an oscillating fan to keep your activity status in the green. Maybe you kept your opinions to yourself. Maybe you set your indicator to Do Not Disturb in Microsoft Teams as the default. Maybe you kicked ass and took names this year, which admittedly is a little weird that you would take someone else’s name. Most people ha...
Read more

The Boxcar Children and the Tiny Home Movement

When I was growing up and going to college in Western and Central Pennsylvania, it was not uncommon to see railroad boxcars occasionally dotting the landscape. I'm not talking about the little red caboose that might sit at an old, defunct railroad terminal in some small town. I'm talking about the big rectangular box cars, usually wooden, with the big sliding doors, sitting on the old rusted frame with metal wheels. And they weren't sitting on some abandoned rail line. Most of the time they were in a field, or a gully along a stream bed, or simply in the yard of some farmhouse. I always thought about "The Boxcar Children" series of books that I read as a child from my elementary school library whenever I would pass one. Another thing that was talked about quite a bit in movies and in the classroom when I was young was the hobo movement. Another societal group living, even temporarily, in boxcars. I used to fantasize about running away and traveling the country as ...
Read more