We went to friends’ house for dinner and had a lovely evening with a nice international crowd and a lovely spread put out by the hosts and in the end I left my purse behind. When we got home T offered to head back uptown and pick it up. Sometimes you don’t recognize help when it is right in front of you – I was having a decent day having snuck some time here and there to run down and see Tin and organize my thoughts and get back into the swing of things and then this early evening I was taking the dead irises out of the vase – the white Spanish vase that my mother carried on her lap in every move we made and there were plenty, the vase she entrusted to me – and I hit the foot of it on the sink and it broke the foot off. I just wanted to sit on the floor and cry.
Instead I rushed to super glue it back together and stuck my fingers together at the same time all while Tin was eating penne with pesto and staring at me like I was out of my mind. When T returned home I was distraught and she said well we can cancel tonight and I said, why would I do that? It almost outraged me as if I she were implying I couldn’t handle it all.
Funny, I don’t recognize when someone is trying to take care of me, it almost feels as if it is an implication of incompetence rather than an offer of help – but I’m working on this – I must.
Haiku for T again from the Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirschfield:
Even if I now saw you
only once,
I would long for you
through worlds,
worlds.