Monday is laundry day in our house. We don’t have a washer and dryer in our apartment nor is there one in the building. I have to carry everything a block and a half to the laundromat. I have been doing the laundry since the kid was born, and before that we used to use a wash and fold service.
Now, I’m the service, and this is my role in the family.
Yet, when I got up today, I was annoyed that I had to do this errand. Annoyed that I have to spend half my day doing this, when I’d rather be doing everything but laundry.
Maybe it’s the heat of Summer, maybe I’m getting older and it takes more out of me to do it than it used to. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m forty-five and I still have to go to a laundromat.
Maybe I’m becoming an angry middle aged man in America. Maybe I’m not the savior of the world, I’m not a rock star, or a genius, or the best at what I do. Maybe I’m just a guy floundering in the middle of the pack.
Maybe I still don’t know what I’m doing, and now the fear of running out of time is invading my ego, causing me to shirk my responsibilities and run away.
I’m just not feeling it today.
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I was doing the Alt Side parking this morning, and the spot I found was along the local park, which was a normal place for me to put the car. As I was next to the park, there was a steady stream of people jogging, walking their dogs, and people with babies in strollers. Just a normal Friday morning. And then, a large mass of elementary school kids came walking by, led by teachers, bounding, over joyed and exuberant. The kids had on different colored shirts, and written on the shirts was “FIELD DAY 2022.” It’s Field Day today for these kids, because, you know, they haven’t had a Field Day in two years. I know it’s an old story to talk about the things we have missed out on during the two Covid years, but I had forgotten about Field Days; the most unathletic athletic competitions that a school can host. Just a fun day at school where it felt like we were all getting away with something, like a clandestine free day. I sat in my car listening to the kids laugh, and scream and cheer each other on in hula-hoop, and three leg races.
I am going to buy a men’s SPF shirt for this summer. The past couple of summers, when we have gone to the beach or a water park, I have gotten some pretty server sunburns. Yes, I have used and reapplied sun screen. Now, when I went looking for a respectable looking SPF shirt, I noticed that all of them are skin tight. If this was 25-year-old me, this wouldn’t be an issue. But 45-year-old me, who likes beer and ice cream, wonders if there is a more loose, casual type of SPF shirt? You know, a SPF shirt that says, “I don’t want to get burned, and I only go out in the sun once a year.”
It’s my wife’s birthday! Oysters and Martinis for dinner!
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The kid is off from school today. A teacher in-service or something. She’s getting old enough now that I don’t have to keep an eye on her all the time, nor do I need to keep her entertained endlessly. But I don’t want her sitting around the apartment all day either.
So, I made her run errands with me. Errands that took us out of the neighborhood. Errands that meant we were going to ride the subway together.
New York City is not the best place for kids, I admit it. Kids see and hear things maybe they shouldn’t, and it can cause them to grow up a little too soon. But, when that happens, me and the kid have a conversation about what she saw and heard. I mean, that’s the job of being a parent sometimes; talking about uncomfortable stuff. And yes, the subway has lead to a great many conversations.
And the subway is how the kid will primarily get around in this town. I feel it is my duty as a parent and a transplanted New Yorker, the teacher my child who is a natural born New Yorker, how to use this world famous example of mass transit.
We started with learning the difference between local and express, followed by what uptown and downtown means. Then we talked about the difference between letter and number local and express trains. Now, we are trying to memorize the stops; 125, 116, 110, 103, 96, 86, 81, 72 and 59. Sure, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the MTA, but from the kid’s perspective, that’s her world when running around New York.
I know for her, the City is vast, and these stops really don’t register as distances in relation to being away from home. It’s a little like magic for her. You go underground, get in a train, and come up in a different world, with different places and people. in that sense, NYC can be a pretty wonderful experience for a kid as well.
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(The short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa appeared in the June 13th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)
(Things might get SPOILED)
Self-perception, self-worth, first impressions, the desire for acceptance; these were all the themes that swirled around and in the very compact and effective short story “Trash” by Souvankham Thammavongsa. The story is about a young female cashier at a local grocery store who falls in love and marries a man in five days after meeting him at the store, and then the man’s mother comes to visit. Mother-in-laws can be tough, and let’s be honest, the mean mother-in-law is a cliché. Hell, even the illustration for the story leads you to that conclusion as well, and as I read the story, I didn’t have high hopes for what I was going to unfold.
Yet, what followed was a very well-crafted comparison for two self-made women, their attitudes toward the world they occupied, and how they desired the same thing, but attacked it in two very different ways.
The young woman, the cashier, is from a world of rude honesty. “If they didn’t like you, you’d know about it and they would say it to your face,” the cashier informs us early in the story, “There is no pretending.” The cashier’s parents died when she was in her last year of high school, and she had to drop out to support herself, as there was no one to help her. She took the job at the grocery store, and she came to enjoy the job, and apricate the employment as it gave her an opportunity to provide for herself – an apartment and furnishing that were all hers.
The mother-in-law, Miss Emily, had gone to college, graduated law school, became a partner, owned her own practice, bought property, worked hard to make something out of herself, as the young woman tells us. Miss Emily’s husband had died several years ago, a sudden heat attack, and she had married him right out of college, as we are told, because having a family was what she really wanted.
When the women meet for the first time, they go to dinner and Miss Emily tells stories of her son, and when they all are on their way back to the son’s apartment, Emily askes about the young woman’s family, where in the story of her parents death is told, as well as how proud she is for having supported herself. Miss Emily’s reaction is to ask if she would quit the supermarket job now that she was married to her son. Miss Emily wants her to quit the job and go back to school, to make something better of herself. The next day, Miss Emily takes her shopping, so she can have clothes that look like a wife of a man who works in an office. But when they return to the son’s apartment, Miss Emily changes and starts to complain to her about the cleanliness of her son’s place, and that she, as his wife, needs to do something about it. The young woman takes a break, and goes outside of the apartment, and wonders about a mother’s love, and how she wants that as well.
And it was this ending of the story that broke my heart a little. I could feel through the words how much the young woman wanted to belong, to be a part of this family, and believing that her mother-in-law was doing all of this out of love, and that she wanted to be recognized as a productive member. But I also felt that for the young woman to get all of that, on some level, she would be forced to admit that where she came from, and what she had made herself into, just wasn’t good enough. Heartbreaking for me, because clearly the young woman was just as much as a “bootstrap” self-made woman as Miss Emily, but her achievements were viewed as less worthy.
It’s the type of story where I want to tell the young woman that she is good enough, and she does have value. But, I also have the feeling that her desire to be loved and validated will lead her to reject all that she has earned on her own. It’s a harsh reality, but also very honest.
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As I said yesterday, the kid had a stomach bug, and she threw up a handful of times. So, as we got to bedtime, she understandably was nervous that she would get sick in the middle of the night. We gave her a bowl, just in case, and I promised her that I would stay in the living room, where she could easily call for me.
Which meant that I slept on the couch.
I guess I could have slept in my bed with my wife, but I was afraid that the kid would be up and down all night, and if she got me each time, then no one would get a good night’s sleep. You know, I was going to take one for the team.
Turns out the kid slept soundly through the night.
I, on the other hand, not so much. Not that I was upset about it. Not sleeping is part of the job.
The couch isn’t the best to begin with, and the pads and pillows are getting worn down. When you lay on it, you feel the springs and the wood joints. I was waking up every hour or so, as when I would roll over, something would poke me.
But the advantage the couch has over my bed is that the couch is next to a window. With it still being appropriately seasonable, the window was open with a slight cool early summer breeze coming in. As was the sounds of Harlem, that equally drifted in.
Sure, there are sounds of sirens and car’s honking. Occasionally someone will start yelling, or a crashing sound explodes in the distance. All of that happened last night, as does that sound of the City humming. What makes that sound? Is it like white light, with all the colors combining to make it? Do all the City’s sounds mix together to make that hum?
I bet some one could answer that question for me, but I don’t want to know the answer.
The City just hums at night.
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