cutlery

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

i’m sorting spoons. not to set the table with fine china, the good stuff pulled from the imaginary sideboard of my imaginary home. not to polish the silver as i was called to do in my family as a child during thanksgiving. i’m just sorting spoons, clean and straight out of the dishwasher, making sure i have my entire set of utensils. you see, what is separating. i’m keeping is the set from my auntie bea. i count out four of each, thankful that none got lost, or left in cars, or taken to work and never returned.

i’m separating the ikea spoons, flat and sleek. counting out the dinner forks and salad forks making sure there are four of each. wondering why four of each are needed. when conversations of past float through my mind, about dishes and cutlery, arguments that never went anywhere and always bubbled over with the soup, bitterness that cluttered our sink with the leftovers. arguments that seem ridiculously silly to me in this moment. that is what was. and it was real. what a strange life that was.

there were always too many dishes. that was the complaint. one bowl one cup one spoon should suffice. i laughed today thinking of this. it’s a good thing there were always too many dishes, now we each get a complete set. how convenient.

into the box they go with the le cruset fondue pot and matching skillets.
one potato two potato three potato four…

the radio is playing and it sings in my ears, my life the fucking musical. it’s funny to me now, the choice of songs played over the airwaves at moments like this. i hear this sweet sweet voice in its melancholy and i smile. this song plays and i hum along although i never heard it before today.

should i be sad? i contemplate it for a moment, how surreal this is to me, and then decide there’s no real emotion to go with this. knowing these dishes, these heavy pots and pans that wreck my wrists will hang in his new kitchen leaves me feeling absolutely nothing. does this mean enough time has passed? maybe.

does this mean i’m getting new pots and pans? most definitely. 
five potato six potato seven potato more…

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i know what i don’t want. when i pick up a book and it’s full of statistics, i have a hard time going any further. i don’t want to read about children of divorce and how they become the adult children of divorce and the statistics that follow them through life. everyone knows the divorce rate is 50% of all marriages. everyone knows that baggage follows them to every new home, every new relationship. everyone knows that baggage is heavy shit.

what about the marriages that remain? not those who are truly happy, but those who stick it out ‘for the kids’? as if they, the kids, are unaware of the bubbling turmoil, the shifting floor, the arguments they don’t want to hear, the disrespect they learn from you, the adult. what i want is a book with those statistics.

but no one wants to talk about that, all that is swept under the rug, the damage that was done by staying. divorce is the dirty laundry that gets aired out in open while silent suffering is what brews dysfuction in families. bitterness is the story that gets passed down from mother to daughter, bondage for the miserable. it’s what sends the child under the table with his hands over his ears, it’s what teaches the boy to be the man, what to look for in a wife, how to partner, how to parent, and on and on.

what about the loss of love, the lack of passion, the disrespect and anger that raises children in these marriages when they chose to stick it out for the kids? who’s gonna write that book? no one. because they stay. they don’t want to see how that is just as detrimental to a growing child. is it? could it be moreso? i wish i knew. these thoughts battle my brain and wreck my sleep.

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today for some reason the stats on my blog have skyrocketed, tripling in size for what is a normal day. truly record breaking. i read my top post. hmmm. more mundane. it causes me some wonder. as in “i wonder what’s going on out there in blogland?” maybe i should pay more attention. i’m usually the last to know. i wear a pretty good set of blinders these days.

often times i feel as if i’m just talking to myself, outloud with poor grammar. i see your comments, i really do. and they touch me and reach me and bring me comfort in ways i never knew before. i don’t want to dismiss that. it’s just that i wonder ‘why’ alot. it’s just this place i’m in, where i’m sorting spoons and wondering what else to write about. life is so mundane and so peculiar at the same time. often times i’m so tired of my own voice. my own self censoring of words, emotions, and thoughts that i worry are too much, too much anything.

when i peek behind the scenes i know that some onlookers stumble here by googling ‘krebs cycle acne’ or ‘citric acid intolerance’ or ‘measuring the flow of two rivers’… but today something stood out and whether it accident or not, whether redirection or dead end, whether it’s true or not, someone found me with these words:

“i can see myself in her”

and that made all the difference.