To Cut is to Feel
Losing myself and being found, all in the name of care
I’m guessing I’ll need two, maybe three more days to completely clear out my mom’s old apartment in her independent senior living community. A trip to the Goodwill, another to storage, a secret visit to the dumpster near the gas station on the corner. The same circuit as I’ve been doing for the past couple weeks.
Today I’m kicking it all off with an espresso run. I’m thinking I’ll maybe deviate from my usual and get a matcha. Or an americano. I am hustling to get everything done before the deadline I’ve set for myself. But I’m also trying to strike a balance in my efforts, which is something I haven’t quite figured out how to do.
What I have figured out, however, is that care comes in all sorts of forms. Care can be a boots-on-the-ground grind, but it’s also a check-in from afar. Care is flowers and chit chat, but it’s also a lengthy to-do list that requires a focus on getting shit done. Care is compassion, but it’s also letting go. It’s close and far, warm and cold. Care is love, but at times, and hopefully only occasionally, it is also hate. Care is giving. To others and to self.
I exit the parking lot in my mom’s GMC Terrain. The back is so filled with boxes that I can’t see out the rearview. I’m taking it slow since it’s hard to tell if the blacktop is icy or just wet. Such is life this time of year in Rochester. Better to budget more time than necessary. To hurry is to invite problems.
My GPS sends me on an alternate route out of the neighborhood. Along the way, I notice two people walking two dogs on a snowy sidewalk on a flat portion of Penfield Road. The man wears a blue Hamilton College hoodie, and the woman is bundled up in a reddish puffy jacket that resembles a sleeping bag with arms. They both lean forward in the direction of their dogs’ leashes, onto which they grip tightly as their bodies are yanked forward. The four move purposefully as one.
The dogs, a black terrier and yellow lab, as if remembering something deep in their ancestry, steadily pull their people who laugh wide-mouthed as they step quickly, carefully navigating the icy patches. The moving cluster enters a crosswalk at North Landing and everyone seems to know exactly where they are going. This, I think, is beauty.
I drive past slowly, the slippery road is to blame, as I absorb the mundane scene. The people look like me and are, I’d guess, about my age. Which means their histories, their experiences, and perhaps their acquaintances in this funny little town are all likely similar to my own.
A mile or so later, as I take the turn onto East Avenue, I’m still thinking about the two people. Wondering who they are and if I maybe know them. Rochester is a small town, after all. Any time I’m in a crowded place I assume there’s someone nearby with whom I crossed paths when my family lived here in the 80s. I often see local billboards with familiar, yet aged faces. I see businesses with surnames I recall from my childhood. This is the sort of place where people stay. They may leave for a while, sure, but they inevitably come back.
I wonder, does this couple with the dogs have similar memories as I do? Did they, too, first hear the Grateful Dead on someone else’s Walkman while riding a school bus? Did they see Cal Ripken Jr. play when he was third baseman for the Red Wings? Did they battle friends over whether the best radio station was 92 MJQ or CMF?
Or maybe they aren’t long time locals, yet still we’re connected by other similarities. Like, to the day the Challenger exploded before it left the earth’s atmosphere. Their teachers, too, may have also rolled a TV into their classrooms, then had someone from the AV department situate it just right in time for the newsy lead up, the countdown, and the blast off.
Did they also not really care about the launch, and were more excited to be skipping math or English or social studies? Is the explosion that followed forever etched in their brains, too? Do they also distinctly remember seeing human limbs falling like feathers towards Earth? Did that moment also give them nightmares? One moment all is fine, and 73 seconds later everything that ever was is gone. Soundless. Did the disaster scare them into realizing just how small and insignificant they really are?
And maybe, too, we all three together, yet separately, felt the unbridled joy that accompanied seeing our respective school’s name scrolling slowly across the bottom of the morning news screen. Back then, not much else compared to the sudden realization that today was a snow day. That we’d get to stay home. Sure, it meant my mom would require each of us kids to put in some reading time before we rushed outside to dig tunnels, but we happily succumbed to whatever for these extra, and otherwise forbidden, hours of play.
The closures and late starts and interruptions in routine made even the meanest neighbors kinder. Did these two people also ignore the invisible lines of demarcation between properties? Did they riddle the surfaces of adjacent powdery yards with flurries of moon boot prints? Did the hiccup cause their hours to pass differently, too? Slower and more fulfilling. Was their delight also palpable as they pulled each other in sleds down the prohibited middle of the street, fully absent of the normal flow of vehicles?
Did they also shovel the drive only to build snowy mountains from which they hurled each others’ bodies. Race for shelter in snowbank foxholes, spit onto snowballs to make them harder and easier to throw, then fire them at kids they never played with otherwise. The cold, the ice, the brokenness, the terror of vulnerability—it all created a oneness, a togetherness, that couldn’t exist otherwise. Did they also think, on those days, that today would surely be their last day alive?
I turn towards North Union, praying there’s an empty space in the free parking spot behind the Ugly Duck Cafe. I always feel like a sucker paying for street parking, and though I’ve never once seen a meter reader writing tickets, I still slide my credit card and hand over a measly couple of wasted dollars. I tell myself that paying is doing the right thing. Is it?
I luck out and land a vacant spot. I shimmy the car in between white lines and brown slush and cut the engine. The world goes quiet, and I sit with my hands in my lap. I wonder if that couple is still out there with their dogs. I wonder if I’ll ever drive that stretch again. I wonder why peace has been so elusive in my transient life.
I also wonder if it’s as cold outside as it looks. It looks it. Wonder if tonight’s ice storm will cause traffic to crawl. If the lake effect will give Rochester more snow than the forecast predicts. I wonder if tomorrow morning the car’s engine belts will, once again, scream for a minute before finally warming and settling into their grooves.
I also wonder if my mom, this morning, woke up confused in her new place. If anyone checked in on her yet. If she is drinking enough water and refraining from extra desserts. I wonder if she remembers where she put her calendar. If she’s using her walker and grabber. I wonder if she’s aware that she tried to FaceTime me twice this morning. I wonder if she remembers precisely why she had to suddenly move into assisted living. I wonder if what I’m telling her friends is true—that she is, in fact, happy.
I sit in the car and debate getting out. Last time I went to this cafe, the barista remembered my drink. “You’re consistent,” he said. “Which makes it easy to remember.” Still, I was amazed by their recall. It had been months since I was last there.
Honestly, this morning I don’t want another coffee drink. But I really do want someone to recognize me. Not me as a good son, not me as a mover, not me as someone who used to live here, not me as the one dialing in all my mom’s household and medical and personal affairs. No. I need someone to see me. Just me. I need that.
The off chance of being remembered again is enough for me to grab my bag and get out of the car. When I reach the cafe’s front counter, a different employee pauses, squints a little, and says, like a question, “Cortado?” A word I always thought meant short, but in fact means, to cut. To split to pierce to wound to notch. To cut is sometimes synonymous with to feel. “Yes, please,” I say, overriding my earlier consideration for something different.
Always here for you Tom.
Nice, Tom. I like the meandering nature of this one, how it weaves around itself. I like the cracked rock we slept next to in the Arctic. I liked the warmth and the coldness in this one.