Eating Papaya at My Writing Table

Autobiography isn't necessary.  History wants in all the time, like the way I put my great-grandmother's silver spoon in this shot. I wasn't actually eating with it.  I'd first just grabbed a regular one from the regular drawer but then I got into a spirit.  Complications ensuing.   Want to celebrate the moment.  See how the papaya looks on that plate. I love that plate, its merry colors, totem of abundance.  Remember when I bought that plate, its set -- and then --

Oh lord, there comes the first husband, and the dying parents, and that day in Ohio, one of a thousand days of grief, guilt and sorrow.

Back to The Moment, please.  See how beautiful is that silver spoon.  Yes, evidence of bygone elegance, something of loveliness and pleasure after all those other stories, to the contrary.  The why of my persistent desire.

Back to The Moment.  Gentle, ripe papaya  with black seeds on a beautiful plate.  Scooping a mouthful with a silver spoon --

-- how I used to buy papaya at the market in Tonga decades ago -- we all loved it, it was cheap and sweet --  and once one of the other volunteers ate so much the palms of his hands turned orange.

The Moment will not stay put.

Getting up and backing away.  Looking again:  from here, you see a different moment:  things less artful, the cords, a glass of juice, the mug of tea, the phone -- less order now.

And backing away.  And looking again at this corner I've made, readied for what I hoped would happen.  A room I love with a blessed bed.   Love and color and light.

And coming back.  The gentle, ripe papaya with black seeds on a beautiful plate.  Does it need my great grandmother?  Ex-husband?  That guy with the orange palms in long ago Tonga?

Okay, ubiquitous memory, devil and angel and pride and melancholy and muse, I let you in.  And then I come back.

The gentle, ripe papaya with black seeds on a beautiful plate.  The Moment I'm in.

Affirming

A sunny Sunday morning.  Backdrop of robins and wrens, chattering and eliding, crisscrossed arias from the tops of maples.  Solitude in the house where sunbeams nudge away doldrums.

Almost forgot how to get started.  It is curious how a woman who has always limned herself "writer," would resist this actual moment, the moment of sitting down.  Opening up.  Typing the first words.  Turning inward.

Of course that's it:  the layered mix of risk and self-esteem.  Which will win -- the loneliness that feeds lackadaisical avoidance or the propellers of self-love, belief and hope?

Stay tuned.  This feels good.

I think I'm beginning to understand

...that life is simply like this, cycles of worry and doubt and disappointment punctuated by the considerable pleasures of daily life. It's just the way it is. I understand these days how a human plodding through life eventually asks, "what does this all mean?" and how she might conclude, "there is no particular meaning" just as reasonably as any of the grander answers offered by the world's gurus and priests.

So I get up early, my fierce little chip of consciousness in the world a mystery of idiosyncrasy, the "me" I have to carry through all this pulsing, fleeting life. The house is a mess. I make a cup of tea, load the dishwasher, sort bills and throw away junk mail. At the dining room table, I sweep off crumbs from last night's dinner with Ted: lift off the brass candlesticks and pull off the long tablecloth to toss down the laundry chute.

It was lobster stew in the new blue bowls and macaroni and cheese in heavy little ramikins. I found an old opened bottle of red and poured myself a glass -- just enough left to go with dinner. We held hands and I offered "grace," the two of us warmly agreeing to that moment of "yes," our customized version of childhood ritual, not exactly our fathers' prayers, but words of gratitude nonetheless, thrown out to the universe, the impulse toward that Something Else.

So, though I'm technically alone down here, snuggled in my bathrobe in the LazyBoy, sipping my mint green tea, my black laptop warm on my thighs in this quiet hour before a February dawn, I also understand -- increasingly and with compassion -- that I'm part of the human race, and we're all like this from time to time -- ticked off and unappreciated, stopped from getting what we want by obtuse and stupid others, hurt by illness, politics, or nature, propelled by the adrenaline of anger and hope...we travel perilously in this world. If I didn't have to march out into it in just an hour or so, I think I've calmed myself down enough that I bet I could go right back to bed and sleep. And sleep. And sleep.

But I can't. It's time to get back out there.