An Elegant Loss
This is the design I submitted to the This American Life tee shirt contest. It didn't win but I still think its cool.
New Friends
Making a new friend
is the same as picking fruit.
You are out on a limb;
You spot a good one.
You reach for it.
I picked figs once
for room and board.
I got tired of the way they tasted;
the honor of the job was lost
on the third day.
Sometimes fruit has bruises.
Figs are filled with pus,
seasons change.
Today I made three new friends,
which tasted the same
as three new peaches
or opening three avocados.
The best fruit to pick
is apples.
I eat them straight
from the tree,
still covered in dust.
I imagine a rolodex
full of pears.
is the same as picking fruit.
You are out on a limb;
You spot a good one.
You reach for it.
I picked figs once
for room and board.
I got tired of the way they tasted;
the honor of the job was lost
on the third day.
Sometimes fruit has bruises.
Figs are filled with pus,
seasons change.
Today I made three new friends,
which tasted the same
as three new peaches
or opening three avocados.
The best fruit to pick
is apples.
I eat them straight
from the tree,
still covered in dust.
I imagine a rolodex
full of pears.
Procedures
My mother has just had a colonoscopy, so she is in bed from the drugs. Just a little drowsy, she says, but I know that the frown in her face means she does not even hear her own voice. Its depressing around here, she says. And it is.
She is surrounded by windows whose panes are small and grey like square rabbits. The window panes are grey because of the fog and they look like rabbits because they might jump out of their cages at any time. That is how thin and unpredictable the windows in my mother’s room look today.
If you looked through the windows at my mother after her colonoscopy you would think a harbor seal had crawled under the covers. Or an enormous lima bean. Something that is tired and sad and curved like a fetus. You would not think it was my mother in there because my mother does not lay around in the daytime.
In the house down the path from our house, in the upstairs bedroom, is Chris, who is like my father. We grew up together in a community where we ate dinner together - he taught me to ride a bicycle - so Chris is like my father. Chris had a quadruple bypass surgery one week ago, and he is laying in his high-framed bed against a stack of pillows. The place under his covers smells like rotting skin.
Chris has a scar that starts at his neck and ends in the middle of his stomach. The place where the scar is pushes away from his body, as though a snake has made a tunnel through his chest. His right leg has been cut from his groin down to his ankle, for the veins they needed to complete his heart. His thigh is the color of prunes, a bruise so big. A bruise like the skin of a spotted cow.
The Olympics are on this week; I have been watching gymnastics. The girls have bodies like pebbles. Balance beam, floor exercise, they bounce and stick it. Before their routines they wrap up their hands and feet with gauze and dust them with chalk. Their hair is hard, like a shield. Nothing about the gymnasts can break. Not hair or medal.
Chris is not watching the gymnasts. Instead he is watching a movie called “Where Did You Come From?” which looks almost as bad as he does. In the movie a young blonde girl is in a hospital bed and a handsome young man is holding her hand.
My mother is trying to read a book, but she cannot keep her eyes open.
The thing that kills me about gymnastics is the way they do all of the unnecessary moves in between the big moves. When they push their chest out it is like they are flaunting. When they slither on the ground or bring their ankle up to their ear it is like they are asking for it. They say the Chinese were sneaking thirteen year olds in, bodies like rakes or shovels, machines built to dig in and bury.
Chris asks me to rub cream on his back. He has a rash from where the hospital bed chaffed against him for five days. When I put the cream on, I want to be gentle. I don’t want to press too hard because beneath his back is his chest and beneath his chest is his heart, which might be fragile. It doesn’t hurt, he says.
I’m okay, my mother says. Just a little drowsy.
It is foggy today. It is the middle of August. There is no one to cook dinner tonight, so I will go out. I start to think about what I will wear to dinner. The black shirt with the black pants. My red boots. My mother has good scarves. I could borrow one. Or maybe a dress, the one with the black and white pattern.
My mother is still in bed. My father has joined her. He likes to take a nap in the afternoon and when he is done he plays the ukulele he made from a cigar box while sitting on the edge of the bed. Something about seeing my parents in bed together at three thirty in the afternoon makes me terribly sad. I also see love.
When I come into their room they laugh. Its really depressing around here, isn’t it? My mother jokes.
I saw a gymnast in a pink leotard do a move that was really impressive. She jumped up from the balance beam for a flip and when she landed, it was with only one leg. The other leg dipped below the beam like a ladle and then cranked back upwards like a windmill. She didn’t even need to check her balance!
Mary is Chris’s wife and she is a second mother to me. She brings a bag of medicine in and sets in on the table she has set up at the edge of his bed. Four hundred dollars at Longs Drugs, she says. Can you believe that? He pees into a plastic container that is bent like a duck’s neck. Mary holds up the container to show me. Can you believe this? She laughs. He doesn’t even have to get out of bed to pee!
The Chinese gymnast falls off of the uneven bars. She is not hurt and does not cry, but her youth burns away. The other Chinese girls pretend to be sorry for her, but they are not real friends because they are all going after the same thing.
My mother is anxious. She does not know how to relinquish control. I have to do something, she says. I’ve gotta get up. My dad says they could drive around. They could go to the store. My mother’s eyes are heavy. She is a determined woman.
Chris says, Its amazing how many Republicans there are at that friggin’ hospital out there in Modesto. He says, I couldn’t find one Obama supporter there. Not even the nurses.
My mother says, This is scary.
I am like a bottle and today I am being filled up with sadness. When I walk down the path I look down at the plants. The plants are green and strong. Succulent, cactus, poppy.
My mother throws the covers off. I’ve gotta get outta here. She is wearing sweat pants and a black fleece vest (how soft my mother always feels!) She grabs a book from her bedside table and pads out of her room, through the house, and down the brick path that connects our house to Chris and Mary’s. Maybe I’ll go read up there with Chris, I hear her say. I watch her open the door to his house. That will be nice, I think, a companion.
She is surrounded by windows whose panes are small and grey like square rabbits. The window panes are grey because of the fog and they look like rabbits because they might jump out of their cages at any time. That is how thin and unpredictable the windows in my mother’s room look today.
If you looked through the windows at my mother after her colonoscopy you would think a harbor seal had crawled under the covers. Or an enormous lima bean. Something that is tired and sad and curved like a fetus. You would not think it was my mother in there because my mother does not lay around in the daytime.
In the house down the path from our house, in the upstairs bedroom, is Chris, who is like my father. We grew up together in a community where we ate dinner together - he taught me to ride a bicycle - so Chris is like my father. Chris had a quadruple bypass surgery one week ago, and he is laying in his high-framed bed against a stack of pillows. The place under his covers smells like rotting skin.
Chris has a scar that starts at his neck and ends in the middle of his stomach. The place where the scar is pushes away from his body, as though a snake has made a tunnel through his chest. His right leg has been cut from his groin down to his ankle, for the veins they needed to complete his heart. His thigh is the color of prunes, a bruise so big. A bruise like the skin of a spotted cow.
The Olympics are on this week; I have been watching gymnastics. The girls have bodies like pebbles. Balance beam, floor exercise, they bounce and stick it. Before their routines they wrap up their hands and feet with gauze and dust them with chalk. Their hair is hard, like a shield. Nothing about the gymnasts can break. Not hair or medal.
Chris is not watching the gymnasts. Instead he is watching a movie called “Where Did You Come From?” which looks almost as bad as he does. In the movie a young blonde girl is in a hospital bed and a handsome young man is holding her hand.
My mother is trying to read a book, but she cannot keep her eyes open.
The thing that kills me about gymnastics is the way they do all of the unnecessary moves in between the big moves. When they push their chest out it is like they are flaunting. When they slither on the ground or bring their ankle up to their ear it is like they are asking for it. They say the Chinese were sneaking thirteen year olds in, bodies like rakes or shovels, machines built to dig in and bury.
Chris asks me to rub cream on his back. He has a rash from where the hospital bed chaffed against him for five days. When I put the cream on, I want to be gentle. I don’t want to press too hard because beneath his back is his chest and beneath his chest is his heart, which might be fragile. It doesn’t hurt, he says.
I’m okay, my mother says. Just a little drowsy.
It is foggy today. It is the middle of August. There is no one to cook dinner tonight, so I will go out. I start to think about what I will wear to dinner. The black shirt with the black pants. My red boots. My mother has good scarves. I could borrow one. Or maybe a dress, the one with the black and white pattern.
My mother is still in bed. My father has joined her. He likes to take a nap in the afternoon and when he is done he plays the ukulele he made from a cigar box while sitting on the edge of the bed. Something about seeing my parents in bed together at three thirty in the afternoon makes me terribly sad. I also see love.
When I come into their room they laugh. Its really depressing around here, isn’t it? My mother jokes.
I saw a gymnast in a pink leotard do a move that was really impressive. She jumped up from the balance beam for a flip and when she landed, it was with only one leg. The other leg dipped below the beam like a ladle and then cranked back upwards like a windmill. She didn’t even need to check her balance!
Mary is Chris’s wife and she is a second mother to me. She brings a bag of medicine in and sets in on the table she has set up at the edge of his bed. Four hundred dollars at Longs Drugs, she says. Can you believe that? He pees into a plastic container that is bent like a duck’s neck. Mary holds up the container to show me. Can you believe this? She laughs. He doesn’t even have to get out of bed to pee!
The Chinese gymnast falls off of the uneven bars. She is not hurt and does not cry, but her youth burns away. The other Chinese girls pretend to be sorry for her, but they are not real friends because they are all going after the same thing.
My mother is anxious. She does not know how to relinquish control. I have to do something, she says. I’ve gotta get up. My dad says they could drive around. They could go to the store. My mother’s eyes are heavy. She is a determined woman.
Chris says, Its amazing how many Republicans there are at that friggin’ hospital out there in Modesto. He says, I couldn’t find one Obama supporter there. Not even the nurses.
My mother says, This is scary.
I am like a bottle and today I am being filled up with sadness. When I walk down the path I look down at the plants. The plants are green and strong. Succulent, cactus, poppy.
My mother throws the covers off. I’ve gotta get outta here. She is wearing sweat pants and a black fleece vest (how soft my mother always feels!) She grabs a book from her bedside table and pads out of her room, through the house, and down the brick path that connects our house to Chris and Mary’s. Maybe I’ll go read up there with Chris, I hear her say. I watch her open the door to his house. That will be nice, I think, a companion.
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