Woman Holding Herself

It is most important to remember that while holding our loved ones, our things, the world, we hold ourselves too.

I am restless. It is Sunday morning and I would like nothing more than to peel my skin off.
To remove the layers of being that contain me, that consume me, that steal me away from art and writing and being myself again, always just seventeen and wandering with no set direction. I chug my coffee, frantically clean the kitchen already deciding that I need a day out of this house. Away from the domestic labor and all the mentally taxing labors required of motherhood and homemaker. I am unsure if I am more afraid of the risk of ICE agents lurking in every street corner and the potential risk they pose to my life or the madness that has settled into my tense limbs and makes me feel like running away.

When everyone has been fed, medicine has been distributed to the sick children, and their father has finally decided to roll out of bed, I jump in the shower, and let the hot water purify my skin until the layers of the self outside of domesticity resurface. I am purified and cleansed of the systems that keep me from myself. I run my fingers through my wavy/curly hair and try my best to straighten out the baby bangs, get dressed and tell everyone but no one in particular that I am going to the store to pick up tissues and toilet paper. Everyone looks up and acknowledges my announcement. I leave before anyone starts asking questions.

Outside an intrusive thought enters my mind; Imagine you leave and never come back. What will your kids tell everyone? My mother went out for a box of tissues and we never saw her again!

It makes me laugh. I jump in the truck with no plan. I drive to a bookstore in Uptown Phoenix. I am not as petrified of ICE on the streets. Still looking over my shoulder and making sure that the car behind me has the normal amount of window tinting and the person inside is not a suspicious agent of the state out to get me, but nothing must stop me. I am looking forward to being alone with myself.

When I finally walk into Changing Hands I take a deep breath of relief. When I was a senior in high school I would eat my lunch of ham and cheese sandwich with baby carrots and then go to the school library. I always felt like I had been holding my breath until I could go to the library and wander the aisles.

I do not need a new book. But I want to find one that is short enough that I can read it during lunch. When I arrived at the Newton plaza live music was playing outside Tesota, a restaurant I have been meaning to visit. I decided I would also eat there and read a book. I search the aisles for something chill. Every short book I manage to pick up is about murder, violence, or worlds breaking apart. I think maybe a self help book could work but I am not in the mood for self-help. I cannot self-help myself back to a past version of myself I am aching for today.

Instead I pick up Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman and finally decide to purchase it.

I pay for it and walk into Tesota where I tell the hostess, “For one please.” and I follow her outside to the patio where the cars are racing up and down Uptown Phoenix, and the live music is wonderful and suddenly I feel alive again.

I order some fancy truffle Mac and Cheese with a side of waffle fries with two dipping sauces and a Mexican Coke. I need the carbs. I tell myself recalling a night of drinking and eating carne asada tacos and red rice I finally cooked just right.

The waiter that brings me a lovely ice cold glass of water compliments my butterfly tattoo, I thank him and tell him that my friend did it. Then I open up my book and hold back the tears.

Maira Kalman writes;

Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly happy or content, 
I think I can provide sustenance for legions of human beings. 
I can hold the entire world in my arms. 
Other times, I can barely cross the room. 
And I drop my arms. Frozen

And then I see myself in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning and giving each child the appropriate amount of medicine after spending an evening walking back and forth from either side of the house tending to their coughs and their bad dreams and their father who drank too fast and is sitting in the shower floor with the water running, drunk, dizzy and disoriented after the carne asada my brother and I haphazardly planned when he came to visit. And I remember the evening stars and the fire we burned and how I told them about the art the kids and I got to do for a museum and how our cookout felt like a celebration of sorts, for all of our hard work, for letting go of the fear we have been holding and all we endure during the work week. Until it wasn’t anymore. And I had to hold it all again and stretch my limbs far beyond my capacity, beyond my own reach, so far I could no longer reach myself.

I woke up and told myself, I am tired of holding it all. I want to be held.

When the food arrives, it is so hot it burns the roof of my mouth. It is salty and creamy and wonderful, I am especially happy for the Mexican Coke that washes it all down perfectly. With one hand on my book and the other on a fork I gently fill myself with sustenance until I belong to myself again.

When I am finished a waiter brings me a to-go box and tells me that he likes my style and asks if I have seen the movie Singles, set in Seattle during the 90s grunge era. I tell him I haven’t

“Oh dude you should watch it. I just had to tell you, your style reminds me of that 90s grunge. I think you’d love the movie. It has a great soundtrack too.” I jot down the name of the movie and tell him I will check it out. He tells me he’ll have them bring me the check and I thank him.

I watch the musicians, a man with a Saxophone and the man playing the bongos and several other small instruments and feel the breeze and the warm sun caress my skin while I wait. I pull out my little notebook and a pen and write a few lines about that morning like the cute little cliche writer I am.

For a few hours I held a book, a pen, and myself too.

Sometimes I think of myself as a good writer, an artist even. That I possess great ideas and great pieces of work within me. That I simply need more time at my desk, with myself, with my own thoughts, and those pieces of work are at the tips of my fingers ready to be threaded together. When I am feeling especially far from myself I like to remind myself that I am more than just what others need me to be, arms for holding, hands for cooking and feeding and tending to, a container for remembering everything – medicine dosage and username and password holder for accounts to bills and important things, a calendar, a source of great emotional comfort.

That they think I can hold it all, everything, all at once. How easy it is for our loved ones to forget that we want to be held too.

I tell myself that I am a woman, a writer, an artist even, like it is the only thing that makes me human and worthy of being held. And everyday is a constant reminder to myself, at least, that I am worthy of it.

After lunch, I drive to Trader Joe’s to buy flowers to place in small vases throughout my house. It is like a nice surprise to walk into a room with fresh flowers in a little thrifted glass vase. It makes me feel luxurious, it makes me feel pretty, it makes me feel held, grounded. Like I myself am a pretty flower in a pretty glass vase with curled or scalloped edges. And someone took the time to choose me, and take me home, and cut my stem to live long and be healthy and fit my vase just right, and then placed me in cool water and set me down in their favorite place to look at me and marvel at me, feed me, water me, tend to me.

I get home at around dinner time. I buy Chinese takeout and the children tell me they missed me. The house is clean, the floors have been swept, the laundry is being done. The sorts of things men only find the capacity to do when they have wronged you, when they are guilty of being bad men, bad fathers, bad partners. I check in with the kids, touch my lips to their foreheads for fevers, and start preparing for their baths while they eat dinner. I help them bathe, I brush their hair, braid them into pigtails, answer their many questions, read them poetry before bed and kiss them goodnight.

When I return to my bed to read until I am sleepy my three year old screams and cries from under the covers that he wants me. He cannot be consoled, he is set on having me sleep on his bed. I tell him that I can’t but he doesn’t care. He wants his mom. I hold him in my arms until his crying settles and he falls asleep. And I am content there, and I feel like I can hold the world in my arms again.

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