Everywhere and everyone is susceptible

I took a short trip to New York this weekend to help my sister, who is having some severe health woes. This after years of my mother and my other sister being ill. It seems that we can’t catch a break. Add to that my son being homeless for a while as his Florida college gets cleaned up, and it makes for a hairy weekend.

I am getting older, so things are naturally starting to go wrong with my insides and those of the people around me. Not to mention, every place is weather-compromised. At least two family members who have never been flooded out of their homes need to rebuild. Florida is afloat more than it has ever been and will get worse. North Carolina has always been on my retirement bucket list, and Asheville might never dig out of the bog. I had dreams of moving to the Western mountains of North Carolina. Marion, where my father grew up. Saluda, where we stayed in a friend’s mountain house every summer. I’ve wanted to return to those green mountains my whole life, but it gets wetter, and Texas gets hotter, as does most everywhere else. With so many people dying and left homeless, there are fewer places to run. Even then, you can’t run from yourself.

This weekend, my husband apologized to my son for bringing him into this world. At first, I balked but then settled down because that boy knows how much we love him. He knows how bad things are. He’s even remarked that he thinks the world has about 50 more good years before the game is up.

I suspect that’s being generous.

I am ready to move on after I graduate. Find a new place to land, but where? There seems no salvation from the future. You can’t outrun the weather. The devastation isn’t coming. It is already here.

My home in Texas has so many things going for it despite the heat and politics. It’s inexpensive and convenient; the healthcare system is robust. The culture here is one of doing everything right, which is admirable. I’m looking at graduate programs all over, and if I get into one, I imagine us relocating—for a while at least—but Texas is starting to look better and better. My husband is talking about making Mexico a second home during the summer, but my son doesn’t want to lose his connection to this place, which is more than I could say at that age.

I take back anything I have ever thought or felt about college students because it is a lot. Especially trying to do it well. Then you take parenting into account, running a household, helping out other members of my family, and it starts to feel like I’m all filled up. Praying I don’t get sick, but knowing all of this comes with the territory.

On top of school, being a wife, and parenting, I’m keeping the art going—writing, needlepoint, and taking quilting and pottery lessons. The quilting suits me because it is full of color and is easy to walk away from if you get frustrated. It’s also easy to pull threads if I fuck up, which I love. You can always start again. I’ve only started pottery, and I find that hugely frustrating. You can work a long time on something, trying to perfect it, and it collapses on you. You have to start all over again from the beginning. This does not bode well for my perfectionist mind and sloppy execution. I’ve been wishing I could quit altogether for the past few weeks. The schoolwork is too much. I’m turning into a shitty wife. There’s no time to take care of myself. I have no room for ceramics in my life, and my sister does it better anyway.

After we busted my sister out of the hospital, we had a few days to sit around and talk about the healing plan. Somewhere in the discussions, I began talking about my pottery frustrations. Now, both my two sisters and I are artistic in lots of different ways, but with this one, visual art stuck the most. While my oldest sister has always been the best at drawing, the middle sister is the best in the 3D arts. Sculpture. Ceramics. Jewelry. As soon as I began voicing my frustrations—my pulling is too rough, my arms are too weak, I push too hard— she wanted to show me.

She reached up from the shelf and grabbed one of her pottery bowls, PICC lines still dangling from her arm, and started pretending. Putting her hands together, she lightly touched the bowl's rim, showing me where she puts her fingers when it’s on the wheel. The pressure she uses as the bowl spins around. She was so delicate and such a great teacher; it made me wish we were in the studio together so she could show me for real. She has never been more beautiful to me than she was in that moment. I wanted to scoop her up and take her there where we could create, somewhere safe away from everything. No more sickness. No more floods. No more war.

But there are no perfect places anymore. Everywhere and everyone is susceptible to heartache. As regular people, we will have to find joy in everything that makes people great and forgive all the faults that make us appalling. For all the things we tear down, we still create.

That has to mean something.