What I Ate, March 6, 2021. Focaccia, Pesto andVerdure: A Lineage of Love

Two weekends ago, I accompanied a friend (*slash/pod partner bc: Covid) to her best friend’s pizzeria. Yes, her best friend has a pizzeria. Like, of her own. Her best friend is Italian. She speaks Italian with her children and her mother and spoke it to me as well after I slipped into the language while addressing her dog. (Note: I address all dogs in a 90/10 Italian/English mix. I just feel like dogs inherently understand the impassioned language of love.)

Anyway. I had this pizza. The base was a beautiful piece of focaccia. I ate it outisde, with my friend/pod partner, her best friend, and the best friend’s daughter. I sat on a bench alone. My friend/pod partner sat on another bench. The best friend and her daughter sat on one bench together. Nice and close. Next to each other. Their body language was similar — relaxed and gentle — and I found myself continually glancing at them, feeling like I was witnessing something special. I was witnessing something special. I was witnessing the love between them.

By sitting that close (though still more than 6 feet away), I felt like I was in the middle of their love. I was standing smack dab in the middle of the lineage of their love.

**

I wasn’t born into a linage of love. I was born into a lineage of pain.

I can honor my mother’s memory and I can love her easily, now. But I won’t lie about how things were. I was born into a lineage of pain and it stayed painful. It didn’t turn around. You know how people say, ‘Hold on, deary.’ ‘Things’ll look up.’ ‘Stay positive,’ and ‘Things will get better.’?

People lie.

Things never got better with my mom and me, nor with my mom and my sister. And in the middle of things not being better, our mom just up-and-died.

[Just because I’m being bloody honest about things not always getting better in some life arena, doesn’t mean that I don’t know/think/have proof that some things ‘get better’/turn out nicely. Of course some things do! But I refuse to live life thinking and/or telling people that just around the bend, things are going to look up. Things might not look up — at least in one or two giant-or-tiny arenas of your life. So you better just steady your weight and and look straight ahead and say: you know what? I am prepared to just shoulder this pile of shit for my entire life. I will find joy in the grass and the birds and the trees and a couple of really great friends and the beauty of french fries. I will face this flaming hot pile of sad shit in this one corner with honesty and bravery. And I will not tell myself — or anyone else that it is guaranteed to get better. The only thing that need be guaranteed is my stubborn insistence to live through it.]

**

It wasn’t my turn to put Ollie to bed last night, but it became my turn when he wouldn’t allow his dad. He just kept saying, “I want mommy.”

For a good while, I ignored him, and Nic continued to insist that Ollie let Nic put him to bed. But Ollie was relentless. He just kept saying he wanted me. Nic and I both thought Ollie was just trying to get further away from the end of the day. You know — the more requests he makes, the further he is from actually sleeping. He knows this. We know this. But at some point, you wonder if it’s cruel to keep the momentary apple-of-his-eye from him. So I went to him. And rubbed his back and used the low, soft tones in my voice; the tones that don’t come out often with him during the day.

I realize how far away he is from me. How far he’s always been, really. Since the moment they pulled him from my body. Since the moment they placed him on my chest.

Ollie adores masculinity. He says things like “I don’t like girls” in the same way he says he doesn’t like brussel sprouts. With fervor. He “doesn’t like their voices” on the radio. Doesn’t like “their costumes.”

You know what I think he ‘doesn’t like?’ The fact that they don’t look like him. And don’t sound like him.

I wish he didn’t loathe the things that are more like me.

I’ll never have a little girl who will compare herself to me. Who will hear her voice in my voice and see her face in my skin. The line between the us and them is so much more muted when we’re closer to the same. I hardly knew my mother and I were different beings. I wanted us to be as much as I feared we weren’t.

Ollie and I will never get confused. We will never look like that mother and daughter on that bench. We will both benefit, and suffer, from that hard line.

**

One of my best friends got married last year (last year was 2 years ago, right?) Well, she and I would often discuss this one band we liked, and then she and her husband decided to use a song of that band’s as their wedding song, so I thought a cool wedding gift would be to get them tickets to one of the band’s shows. But guess what? I thought (I seriously didn’t even QUESTION IT) that I would buy three tickets and we’d all go together. In a city none of us lived in, meaning we would also all stay in an Airbnb together. You know, shortly after their wedding. Do you see what I am saying? I ESSENTIALLY BOUGHT MYSELF A TICKET TO A SNIPPET OF THEIR HONEYMOON, The funny (?) thing about this is…I never, not once — questioned this or doubted this approach/equation until the OTHER NIGHT. The other night, I was in a car, driving (not sure where I was going? I’ve only done grocery pick-ups and coffee drive-thru runs now for the last 12 months, so one of those?) but anyway — I started thinking about a song from the band and about the show we attended and then I realized I invited myself along on their honeymoon and I felt my face get all red and weird in the dark car, in the glow of the dashboard, and I wanted to call or text her, but I figured I’d wait until my embarrassment went down a notch or two? So that I could think around why I did what I did but it’s been three days now and I haven’t addressed it with her personally. But thinking back on how happy I was to be in between that mother and daughter, I realize that I was doing the same thing with my friend. I was just joining their union — hijacking another family. I think — that early on in life, I was so starved for love that I decided I would just get it wherever the fuck I could and I would not have shame about it. Shame doesn’t get you fed. Shame doesn’t get you loved. The shame — it comes — sometimes — in the dim light of my dashboard, or the dark surrounding my bed, but I can push it off when you show me the light of someone else’s love. I can always push it off enough to push myself into the light of someone else’s love.

**

So — Sofia, Anna, Macee and Sam (and countless others whose homes, kitchens, nights, and couches I have invaded and refused to leave until it got awkward) — thank you for sharing your family’s focaccia with me, for sharing your honeymoon with me, for sharing your lives with me. Thank you for letting me stand in the middle of your love.