NOT smoking a pack day isn't enough (we also need friends)
A confession (why not start with a bang): it’s easier for me to...
A confession (why not start with a bang): it’s easier for me to perform than to enter a room full of women and talk. There is something about a small-ish gathering in which the center of activity is simply conversation that makes me wonder how soon I can leave without being entirely inappropriate. Or, I don’t know, think really hard and dig into the recesses of my brain until I secure a passable reason for why I’m so sorry, but I won’t make it this time. (Or maybe ever? I think, but don’t say.)
The strange thing is I love people. I even (and this one might startle you) really like them. Just tonight, for instance, I sat next to a woman I barely know in a circle of other women I know a bit better and learned that her father-in-law just married someone her age and it’s interesting to be peers with your mother-in-law. Now, I bought right into that conversation and was asking if she thought they’d have kids and if they did, then her own kids would have aunts or uncles younger than them—but never did get to hear the rest of her story because we had to play an ice breaker game.
And actually, here’s the part where I confess even more: I ended up enjoying it. Ice breaker games can be fun. So can cleaning messy kitchens (when you get to do it in blessed solitude). What else can I add to my List of Shocking Things? It’s also fun to stand in lines by yourself. Even the DMV holds a certain charm when going guarantees you at least an hour of uninterrupted time with a good book. (You might be a mom of young kids if this list is intriguing to you.)
This ice breaker game reminded me of a drinking game I’d played once on a Broadway tour. Every time someone confessed to not having done something (“never have I ever”) that the rest of us HAD done, we had to take a sip. I got through the whole game without having to take more than one—maybe two at most—sips. I could’ve safely driven anywhere that night. But in the circle of women, we each had five pennies. We took turns saying something we’d done and if you hadn’t done that, you had to hand over one of your pennies to the person who had. I clutched my pennies soberly, enjoying the way they felt as I’d stack and re-stack them in the palm of my hand. I’d never lived in a foreign country (two months doesn’t count, is what I was told) or gotten pregnant on my honeymoon (still waiting to honeymoon with TJ), and lost my pennies one by one, but enjoyed hearing about someone to the right of me who’d been on a reality show (90 Day Fiancee) and the woman a few people over who grew up driving a horse and buggy. I liked it and laughed and cracked jokes and yet I still kept wondering, Is it over now? Now can I can go home?
Is this anxiety? Or deep down, are we all counting down the minutes until we can just go home? That’s the nice thing about grief. And I know, I KNOW. The sentence makes no sense. There isn’t anything nice about grief. At least not nice in a worth-it kind of way. Certainly not while you’re on fire from it. (This makes me think of a joke from a show I watched growing up called “Wishbone.” The protagonist was a dog, a cute brown and white Jack Russell terrier, and he played the leading character in different great works of literature and plays. He was compelling in Shakespeare, wore a long scraggly beard for Rumpelstiltskin. Anyway, one time Wishbone was commenting on a story set in the Catskills and he mentioned how poor a name that was, considering, he said slyly, “That cats have no skills.” Cats have no skills and grief has nothing nice. Both make sense depending on if you’re a dog or a person doubled over from grief, I guess.)
Notwithstanding that there’s really nothing nice about grief, let me tell you what’s nice about grief. You’re handed a get out of jail free card that can suddenly be applied to anything and everything. Don’t want to go to that graduation party? Show them your grief card. Don’t feel up to bowling with the girls? Your grief card gets you out, no questions asked. The reprieve from the relentless expectation to hang out can be kind of nice. I mean, I’d choose no grief at all if I could, but I can’t, so I will clutch my little grief card and use the meager perks it affords me.
But here is something. I recently threw a small party for my husband TJ. It was his birthday and I decided to be old-fashioned, really harkening back to the pre-Covid days, and throw him a party. When I told him I was doing this he said, “Why would you do something like that?” So I said something about how we are each worth celebrating. That maybe there are some people left who miss the olden days of spending time with each other in person, in real time, with no interfacing through screens. That we could set the bar really low and, if you’re still just alive on a birthday, still breathing and all that—let’s throw a party! Someone made it another year and we all rather like that someone a lot, so let’s eat cake and force each other into conversations.
I strung up balloons and covered tables with fancy table cloths (well, plastic, so is that actually considered fancy? They did have gold polka dots, though, so perhaps that qualifies them?). I baked approximately 40 cupcakes and told my seven year old daughter Charlee she could decorate the little white banners that would top each one however she wanted. She split up the banners into four groups of ten, labeling each with “TJ,” a star, a heart, and a “God is good,” respectively (yes, He is, Charlee). After everyone had been there a while, I even took it a step further. I opened the floor for people to say something they love about TJ. I made sure people knew this wasn’t mandatory, because I realize this kind of public spilling of one’s emotional guts can make some people really want to spill actual guts.
A beautiful thing happened. Not only did people show up to this party, some people even said things they love about TJ. They did this out loud, one at at time. I watched TJ smile and say thank you and isn’t it lovely when someone just takes in gorgeous words that expand our hearts and turn the lights up brighter so we can see ourselves better? Isn’t it lovely when we don’t deflect encouragement with reminders to the world as to why we aren’t perfect or deserving or whatever it is we do to poke holes in the encouraging words that come our way and watch the bolstering we so desperately need drain through us like a sieve? But at this party for TJ, he simply said thank you and took it in. The words stuck to his bones. I saw it, and it made me happy.
So here is my point.