Spark: write about something kind someone did for you…
big or small, recently or in the past.
Friends are like a box of chocolates. Etc.
One particular friend of mine has a penchant for catastrophic one-upmanship:
“That happened to you? Well… we were in a typhoon in the Carolinas! Well… my temperature was 103 and it stayed up there for a week! The cyst was the size of a peach! The tumor was the size and shape of a waffle! Sheila’s cocaine-injecting brother is a doctor! Who’s still practicing!”
(I think to myself: well… when is he going to quit practicing and get it right?)
“My brother cut his fingers off!!”
What I’m looking for, I explain, is validation – not minimization. She remains unapologetic when I point this out to her. Well, she says, it happened to me.
So it’s all about her. Which pisses me off, because it’s supposed to be all about me.
That is why I was shocked into silence last week when she said: “Doesn’t the fact that I care about you help in the least?”
“You do?” I finally said.
“Why do you think I keep talking with you?” she asked.
“I find it hard,” I said slowly. “To recognize care when it comes from women. There isn’t a pathway for it into my heart. I can see it with my head, I just can’t relax into it. While at the same time, I can wrap an email from Alex around me like a warm blanket. It is so soothing. I’ve never met him, and I never will. Of course I can blame my mother for this.”
“That’s so screwed up,” she said. “Too bad she didn’t die young, like mine did.”
I couldn’t help but smile. And agree.
“I do want you to know that I know you care about me,” I told her. “However else I may act.”
• • •
Three days later, it is hotter than usual at yoga dance and we’re all overheating. Because I’d gotten chilly the week before, I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt. Everybody else is dressed in layers.
Tina says, “You want my T-shirt? I’ve got a cami on under it.”
Down South they say all offers should be turned down the first two times.
But really. I’m a girl who wears white before Memorial Day.
So I say, “Thank you, yes.”
It’s a mile down the hall to the ladies’ room. I don’t want to lose the rhythm of the class.
“We won’t look if you want to switch right here,” the instructor says.
If I do that, I’ll show them my soft underbelly. In its untanned, untoned glory. With the scar from when I almost died and didn’t know it.
They’ll see the red dot where I pulled a tick off yesterday. They’ll see my almost hairless, unshaved armpits. They’ll see those unbiopsied moles on my back. They’ll know that I don’t have any tattoos. They’ll know that I’m not as cool as I think I am.
But they’re not here to hate me, I tell myself. They aren’t out to hurt me.
I want to believe, in my heart, that they care about me.
So I take a breath, close my eyes… and change.
________
cayugaview 