Personal Essay Mumbo Jumbo

I stepped out onto our cabin’s porch with my sister. We couldn’t see as many stars as you’d think, but the silence of the rural Alabama land was loud. Maybe it was better that way. We’re able to see a lot. The internet and TV show us a lot of stuff. I can Google “starry night sky”, but I can’t search for "silence".

I tucked my hands into my dad’s old fleece. The fleece over the sweatshirt over the long-sleeve shirt over the undershirt. The silence, a new noise, pulled me through everything to an uncomfortable proximity of my God.

“Can you imagine living like they used to? Wondering where out there the others are?” She asked.

After she went inside to her son and husband I sat in a rocker and pulled a cigarette. Under the density of the new noise I was too close to my fuck-ups and thankfulness‘.  I hadn’t been there in a while. Sometimes I can go some time without going there. It’s taxing. And usually it’s then that I get ideas about things I can do. These things I can do are normally things that would help everything, and they’re always things that don’t sound particularly swell--decisions that are both small and big, but make me.

When I’m riding in the car past old grey-wooded barns, in bed looking at ceiling plaster, or even writing--that’s when I dream about doing all those things I won’t. I think about telling the next Her that she's important, talking to the person I‘ll pass, or writing my Grandma a letter about how she makes me laugh.

But my insides can only so often, and for only so long, dwell on what I want to but won’t. And whether it was my insides for their own sake, or Him, my minuscule muse of Cognitive Control feverishly steered me away. He’s usually hiding or drunk or something. But this time, thankfully, he gave me a small shout. And he and I ended up back on the porch. Away from the cold my Mom and Dad slept in one room, my Sister’s family in another, and my little brother watched Sportscenter in a third.

I’ve had people close to me say that they felt like they knew me until they stayed with me at my house. I’ve also had people close to me ask which of me I am.  What do they expect? I think it’s hard to act the same when there are places like this cabin, where because of their personal interests‘, people don’t know how truly normal I am. People who gloss over my egregious errors and hug me for my resiliency amidst consequences I alone have earned. And somehow I’m supposed to modify so that I make sense to both the people at this cabin, and the outsiders who know the truth?

But tonight’s one of the few not dedicated to how frustrating I am. Tonight’s about the miracle of the blind. It’s about the blessing of bias, and that despite all the great stuff we humans have cut out of life, we still have families. And yeah, I know about the 50% divorce rate. But everyone, regardless of blood, tries for family. And in family we’re on someone’s side and they’re on ours. Tonight the holes my eyes burn in the plaster will be more shallow because of four seconds of country quiet. A member of my life’s cast could share in total astonishment with a member of my family as they hear one another’s impressions of who I am. Thank you God that the two parties would leave the interaction believing the other to be mad, and that one of them would scratch my head, tell me they love me, and remind me that they prayed for my infant heart--because God, it’s still so small.