Recently I watched, in the cinema, a movie called Thelma.

Thelma, in conversation with her friend, struggles to understand why anyone would want to spend their last days in a care center; she begs to know whether he doesn’t feel suffocated by choicelessness and smothered with unsolicited concern. Her friend says something sad and quite sweet, something about how his late wife used to do all the cooking or the cleaning and doesn’t Thelma miss her partner, too? Doesn’t she long for care?

And she realizes how the role she remembers, as the one doing that work, makes the two friends very different.

And it’s nobody’s fault

but to Thelma, exaggerated concern about her wellbeing from her family does not feel like love — it feels like an insult. It feels like her capacity is still being questioned, after all these years; she is being underestimated by the people who claim to know her.

How could they deem me so helpless? I don’t feel helpless — I built this home. Am I helpless?

A while back, a friend of mine hosted me at her sweet Tallahassee one-bedroom for soup and apologized for the state of her kitchen but she had just been so busy this week and

I later recalled this comment to her (she had obviously forgotten) and told her I deeply envied her dirty kitchen.

And I worry she misunderstood me.

What I meant by this was

I ache to see a woman taking her time

That is

Taking time and making it hers

A feeling of comfort amidst filth is, to me, a bold reclamation of leisure time.

I have long-aspired to be the kind of woman who can let dishes pile up in the sink

And I must admit the cosmos has begun to yawn at my incessant aspiring to be somehow something other than who I am but

I desperately want to be so blissfully unaware or busy or just plain laid-back

And it does not have to be a sink, either

There is something very specifically impossible to me about finishing a meal and just

Sitting there

At a table littered with dirty plates

Plates who still remember what it was to be hot and full

Staring across at someone or no one

Without a worry in the world about the next place needing to be gotten to or whatever work must now be done

Because it is work, you know — to prepare food and serve food is work and to clean up afterward is work and to sandwich some kind of deep, concentrated delight in between work like that is

Well,

Work

For me, at least

In this cultural context,

At least.

So to the women who can so effortlessly recline after a meal and exclaim

Let’s stay awhile

Tell me more

I applaud you

And I envy you because your

choice

seems to be the ultimate rejection of the false notion that doing is more important than being!

that respect requires struggle

that you must drown in acts of service to prove your worth

I don’t give damage a chance to surface. I’m working on it but I tend to do dishes between cooking and eating. I’m not convinced of my own logic; my food might get cold but at least the kitchen will be tidy and

I can sit at the counter hoping that future Alex will be thankful to past Alex for doing the dishes for her

Where are we always rushing to, anyway?

For the same reason, I reverse my car into every parking spot & I eat my vegetables first and I used to wake up at quarter-to-six to do homework so that I could nap in the afternoons

But

Obviously

Most afternoons,

I squeezed in a bit more homework during nap time so that I could finally be free on the weekends and

…

I have come to believe I must suffer before I indulge —

This tendency of mine has become particularly troublesome in my relationship-building and in my trusting that things can go unsaid and that things can go unreconciled and that things can pile up and get messy and that maybe people can exist in different ways than the ways I know

People can experience messiness and find comfort and community in it

There is value in the reconciliation of the mess

So yeah,

Sitting comfortably at a table full of dirty dishes is like saying

I see you and I know I can deal with you later

I know you aren’t going anywhere and I know no one else is going to do you for me

It’s like saying

I deserve rest and because I want to rest, I will rest

Maybe it’s just like saying

I don’t feel like it

So I’m not going to

I’m hungry so I will eat

I want to leave so I will leave

I want to stay so I will stay

I think a woman who can let the dishes pile up is a present woman

A woman determined and unmoved

A woman who stands solidly in her own capacity for loose ends, for uncertainty

for curiosity, even.

The work I aim to do is whatever work it takes to become the kind of woman who can see leisure in a sea of dirty dishes; one who can wade her way into an unkempt kitchen kept afloat by the buoyancy of a patient joy, sipping warm air in through a snorkel she made herself from blind wonder and grime, slipped free from the devastating weight of a desperation for approval.

And I anticipate a lifetime of work at this refusing to drown.

xx

Until You Know Better

Stop using the baby voice

Use your best judgement; there absolutely does come a day when the dishes must be done. I still have heaps to learn about keeping a home.

Good enough is good enough

Great Artists Steal

And once, a teacher of mine told me that she had a place that felt like exactly the right place

She knew how to get to wherever she felt exactly herself

She knew how to get there

By heart she knew the way

And I asked how time passed for her in that place

And she said the moment time was realized was the moment she knew she was no longer in her exactly right place