(no subject)
My Bubbe, a term of endearment that Jewish kids often call their grandmother, moved recently out of the house that she had moved into when I was five when she left Las Vegas and wanted to be close to her daughter in California. I was visiting, for whatever reason that weekend, I think mostly to help load up my Bubbe’s dumpster with boxes upon boxes of undesirables after she had packed, or to reacquaint myself with the oscillating unfamiliarity of my parent’s home.
Bubbe fed me soup and crackers, as she did when I would walk to her house after school every day in sixth grade, usually after I would walk my girlfriend, Sarah, to her house, first. Her kitchen was always warm, it’s positioning received a lot of sun during the day. If it were my kitchen, I might have found it unbearable, but it was always cozy, just on the positive end of that very specific heat that makes you want to fall asleep in it. She had gotten thinner since last I saw her, and would begin each new topic of interest on my life with a subtle gasp and a, “So tell me…”
I hadn’t really begun the inner process of emotionally detaching from my Bubbe’s house. I had also begun walking along an awkward threshold in which my childhood wished to forever have grandma’s house as a point of reference, and a cold, callous, skepticism for anything from that childhood that I have noticed my reference for becoming weaker or potentially inaccurate.
I needed to have it because it made me, it assured me that the memories I have are mine, and that the eyes I own and the skin that I fit into is mine, and when I breathe in, the air is cordial, is the same air that I have breathed for years and carries with it the exact history of how to sustain me. And when I breathe in unfamiliar air, I know it, I’ve known it for years that something doesn’t feel right, doesn’t fulfill me right, and it makes me wild. These things happen, and they happen, it seems, in rapid succession most recently, transplanting my references and leaving me unknowing, wide-eyed and stupid, with no concept of how to react.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” She asked me.
“No,” I replied.
“How come?”
“I dunno, I’m busy with school.”
The phone rang, a phone with distinct colors from the 1970s, oranges, browns, and yellows, with gigantic square numbers the size of a small child’s fist. She went to answer it with the enunciated demeanor of a Jewish woman from Brooklyn, “Hello?” far too loud and direct to be necessary on the West Coast.
“Who is this?” An exasperated gasp. “No, I’m sorry, he’s deceased!” And hung up the phone.
“Yeesh,” she said, as she sat down.
Shortly, my parents had arrived and we began putting boxes into the dumpster. Some things I remembered, and most that I didn’t. Bubbe stood by with her hand clenching her mouth in concern. We threw out an old Pachinko Ball machine that was “going to get fixed soon” for years. We ran across several boxes of old “Playboy” magazines from the 60s and 70s that we decided to keep. An old bottle of sake, from some unknown time went home with me, as well. I don’t even know if sake gets better with age.
“Are you okay?” I asked Bubbe.
“No, I’m not,” she responded, though I’m not sure if I was asking about the moving or the phone call and I’m not sure which she had answered to.
I felt a familiar stirring becoming a maelstrom of thoughts and feelings growing to an intensity that may have burned a hole through me, and then as often occurs, those feelings were gently eclipsed and my mind relished in numbness.
Bubbe is much happier in her new place; my mother said she never felt a connection with the old one as she did with their house in Vegas. I’ve been down to visit several times since the move, and it really is very lovely.
Bubbe fed me soup and crackers, as she did when I would walk to her house after school every day in sixth grade, usually after I would walk my girlfriend, Sarah, to her house, first. Her kitchen was always warm, it’s positioning received a lot of sun during the day. If it were my kitchen, I might have found it unbearable, but it was always cozy, just on the positive end of that very specific heat that makes you want to fall asleep in it. She had gotten thinner since last I saw her, and would begin each new topic of interest on my life with a subtle gasp and a, “So tell me…”
I hadn’t really begun the inner process of emotionally detaching from my Bubbe’s house. I had also begun walking along an awkward threshold in which my childhood wished to forever have grandma’s house as a point of reference, and a cold, callous, skepticism for anything from that childhood that I have noticed my reference for becoming weaker or potentially inaccurate.
I needed to have it because it made me, it assured me that the memories I have are mine, and that the eyes I own and the skin that I fit into is mine, and when I breathe in, the air is cordial, is the same air that I have breathed for years and carries with it the exact history of how to sustain me. And when I breathe in unfamiliar air, I know it, I’ve known it for years that something doesn’t feel right, doesn’t fulfill me right, and it makes me wild. These things happen, and they happen, it seems, in rapid succession most recently, transplanting my references and leaving me unknowing, wide-eyed and stupid, with no concept of how to react.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” She asked me.
“No,” I replied.
“How come?”
“I dunno, I’m busy with school.”
The phone rang, a phone with distinct colors from the 1970s, oranges, browns, and yellows, with gigantic square numbers the size of a small child’s fist. She went to answer it with the enunciated demeanor of a Jewish woman from Brooklyn, “Hello?” far too loud and direct to be necessary on the West Coast.
“Who is this?” An exasperated gasp. “No, I’m sorry, he’s deceased!” And hung up the phone.
“Yeesh,” she said, as she sat down.
Shortly, my parents had arrived and we began putting boxes into the dumpster. Some things I remembered, and most that I didn’t. Bubbe stood by with her hand clenching her mouth in concern. We threw out an old Pachinko Ball machine that was “going to get fixed soon” for years. We ran across several boxes of old “Playboy” magazines from the 60s and 70s that we decided to keep. An old bottle of sake, from some unknown time went home with me, as well. I don’t even know if sake gets better with age.
“Are you okay?” I asked Bubbe.
“No, I’m not,” she responded, though I’m not sure if I was asking about the moving or the phone call and I’m not sure which she had answered to.
I felt a familiar stirring becoming a maelstrom of thoughts and feelings growing to an intensity that may have burned a hole through me, and then as often occurs, those feelings were gently eclipsed and my mind relished in numbness.
Bubbe is much happier in her new place; my mother said she never felt a connection with the old one as she did with their house in Vegas. I’ve been down to visit several times since the move, and it really is very lovely.