Sledgehammer

As this year unwinds, today is the first day where there is a purpose to being here and I’m pulled outside of self-centered endeavors. The LaLa is still a struggle to figure out how to get finished – so many moving parts still yet to come together. Today it’s over to Kim’s to help one of the ones that truly lost everything, the house, the rabbit, and everything contained within – to gut what’s left – to give her a tabula rasa so she can rise again.

Although the past few days have been beautiful New Orleans December days, I couldn’t disguise my chilliness this morning towards N and towards her negative predictions about my life as she compared it to her life or B’s life and drew analogies that don’t quite fit as she forces her peg into the hole she has carved out for me. Why does everyone insist they have the answers in the back of the book when I am still operating from the student version, the one where there is a test at the end of each day to see if I guessed at least 50% correctly.

I smell a tendency to use shared experiences to relate to anything and everything despite evidence to the contrary. It’s what gives us wisdom and comfort – the knowing – been there done that – but I rail against knowing the unknowing. There is still so much to learn – what we are capable of believing or dreaming, what others are made of, how circumstances can shift resolve and how people can twist and morph into better versions of themselves with the right catalysts.

Yesterday afternoon spent with W and my family – watching my little girls with their little girls and seeing how factors have shaped them and the one that was flighty is less so and the one who was in charge is more so and the ones they have formed a partnership with are more or less reflections of them and the ones they have created are off doing their own thing regardless of the directions they are being given.

W said – I like it here because I can do what I want – goodness! I try to find things to say no to and don’t see any need because he wants to run and I run with him, he wants to see the trailer again and I don’t mind going to see it again even though it is off-gassing, and he wants to open his presents – no, not early – my only no? – and he wants me to stay with him on the couch to cuddle – where are the no’s?

And being summoned in the midnight hour – the awkwardness of the days finally dissolving, the ambivalence dissipating, and a general sense the New Year might bring a better life. And only now can I begin to allow myself to indulge in memories.

Laying here tonight, my body is spent after swinging a sledgehammer – but it felt so great knocking down those moldy walls. I couldn’t help but think about LaLa as I was bringing this house to the current state LaLa is in. The Snake showing us how to bring down the sheetrock, how to tear up the floor, how to pull up the rusty nails – watching and feeling layer by layer this house come apart, I longed layer by layer for LaLa to be built – to have done the demo myself, to be building it myself – I am so disconnected from the process I don’t know how I can claim the house when it is done.

N was in the window picking up glass and I sang to her – there once was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.

You singing about yourself girlfriend, she laughed and said melting my chilliness.

Later as we lay in the grass drinking beer and laughing – I looked around at the dusty crew and thought of all the things we might be doing but we were all doing this and are going to do it again. The house sat regurgitated on the curb and N threw beers in it from where we sat – we spoke about Katrina and who would run for mayor – and reflected on a city we all love and want to rise again.

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