Not the day I drew up, or was it [?] Lots of cooking in the evening, an enormous tantrum by Monk during dinner, this unending train of gourmet food that she had no interest in eating, and of which there was just not enough.
January 2, 2020
One theory of this project is to see what repeats, what kinds of rhythms are habitual to a given time of year, to a place in the calendar, and what is singular to that moment. What are the seasons of my feelings, my work habits, my relationships? And what’s perpetual?
The two sentences quoted above come from a New Year’s visit from my parents, following closely the week we spent in Texas last Christmas.
Some details in the entry make it come alive for me. In these moments, voice or sense comes through the page into the present. “I’m liking being the cook again,” I write, which is a normal reaction after a week in Katy. (Certainly it’s one I’m having again, despite my best intentions.) As I was telling S yesterday during our run, the amount of exercise we’ve been doing is just the inverse of being able to control the food I eat: output of calories, rather than input.
Another detailed moment in that entry was about a walk I’d gone on with my mother, if I recall correctly at her own request. I describe it as uneventful with the exception of “a longer than it needed to be conversation about [R and her friend] and the bathroom. Mom overreacted…”
The other character in this entry is my dad who “spent the whole time I was cooking looking for a misplaced wire.” Dogged and a little obsessive, a man needing order more than he needs connection, and generally all because of his own relationship with disability, there’s a conjunction here between me and him. It’s maybe a lesser one, because I often get by without imposing my order on everyone. I successfully get what I need (sometimes) the way I drew it up (though not, for instance, today). This could also reflect my own degree of privilege in terms of disability, my ability to pass, rather than any skill related to coping.
What’s enough, I wonder? It’s the question from the joke at the core of the opening monologue of Annie Hall, of course: why is the food so terrible and served in such small portions? I cringe to recall that I took that line as the title of a section of some collection of stories I produced in college. I cringe at a great many things I produce in college, of course, but maybe I should check that impulse. Maybe this project can help me recognize what I noticed then that I’ve kept noticing, and I can make something of the resonances.
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