we’re clumsiest with those we love the most

a monkey petting a cat

instinctual animals warding off loneliness

risking ineptitude and lacking grace, pressing on regardless

making our existence known

knowing our continued existence depends on being of service

in service to the love we need

pigeon

dad doing the covers wrong

I don’t know how old I was. Maybe three? Was it before or after the divorce? I don’t know, but my mom wasn’t there and my dad was, and somebody had to tuck me in, so of course my dad did, but here’s the thing: when my mom did it, somehow the covers always ended up crisp, cool, flat, tidy, unobtrusive. This particular night when my dad did it, he left the room thinking the job was done I guess, but the covers were rumpled and kind of heavy and oddly too warm. I can still picture the shape they made in my mind in the dark — a clothy cumulonimbus atop my chest, where the weather should have been fair and the seas calm.

I also used to have a big problem with wrinkles in my socks — many a family excursion was repeatedly halted mid-stroll so that I could sit down on the ground, take my shoe off, fix my sock, and put my shoe back on before going any further.

To be honest, I still can’t stand wrinkled socks — or messed up blankets.

Did I complain? Make a fuss, verbally or otherwise? Was I extra sensitive because of maybe having a fever or something? I have no idea. This memory starts and ends with a specific physical discontent and its corollary emotional disquietude. I didn’t resent my dad, didn’t think less of him, didn’t demote him in my pantheon of significant humans; I was just ... bothered. But I can see how post-hoc reinterpretation of the story could shape it into a narrative of paternal insufficiency, which would then need to be counterweighted by recalling something he did better than my mom did. But gratuitous grace is insulting, and belies itself, so we’re not gonna go there.

Somehow I made it through. Now, a fistful of decades later, I still have plenty of discomfitures to complain about. I can’t pee right but I always have to pee. I can’t sleep right and I’m usually tired. My neck’s stiff because I can only sleep in one and a half positions. You know, the usual precious tedious bullshit that stalks us all, I suppose. Little things that get serrated by loneliness, that get defanged by family, community, by other people to laugh it off with.

Esther Perel said one difference between her American experience and some of her European experiences is that in the latter, there’s generally a sense of common welfare, a social safety net as a matter of course; in the former, you’re generally expected to do everything yourself — medical, housing, child care, etc. She said that in America, a marriage is a social safety net of two people, often born of necessity. It’s funny how often I think of something as “how the world works” when it isn’t — it’s just the part of the world I’m used to. There’s so much that’s wrong with the world I’m used to — so much worse than a wrinkled sock, a rumpled bedspread, or an unsurprising inconvenience of aging.

Maybe being used to the things that are truly messed up is part of the problem? We’re too good at adaptation? Who’s gonna smooth out these covers? Whoever’s there, or still here, for better or worse; we’ll just have to do the best we can. Praise where praise is due, and effortless forgiveness for the well-intentioned attempt. What cannot be cured, love, must be endured, love, but somewhere in between acceptance and death, you get a chance to kick the covers off, if they’re pissing you off, and bolt out of bed, and stalk downstairs — welp, might as well take a piss while you’re down there, but now you’re up, now you’re wide awake — so now what?