A Tear in the Fabric

Some people faced with loss, a sense of being entangled in the nature of things, turn to wine or prayer or baking a cake. I turn to word games. I come by this naturally. My father would always have an old envelope on hand where he would solve puzzles of his own creation with a pencil stub. How many small words can you find in the longer word metropolitan? In my efforts to tame the raging seas, I am partial to homonyms of all kinds. These pairs of words confuse and tease like schoolyard bullies. They wear a variety of outfits. There is first of all the category of two words that are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different and seemingly unrelated meanings. Bear with me. Not the grizzly kind. Next, there are the words that are pronounced the same way but are spelled differently and have divergent meanings. Here a good example would be lead, the metal, and led the past tense of lead. What can I say? That’s English for you. Imagine what it’s like if it’s not your native language and you are being herded out of steerage or into detention centers at the southern border. My favorites are the words that are spelled the same way but pronounced differently like tears on my pillow and tears in the fabric of life. A source of endless nerdy delight for me is unearthing or, admittedly, inventing the deep connections between two such words. Something was passed along to me in the womb, in my dreams, that compels me to see the tears pouring out of my eyes originating in the tears, the wounds, that life inflicts. This is especially true now as I tear myself away from Frank to sojourn among my books for the next month in the quiet of my space looking out at late winter Minnesota, bare trees and thin ice.

Photo by Becca on Unsplash

If you read (past tense of read) last week’s substack Moving Parts, you know that I fell from California to Minnesota down an escalator like Alice going down the rabbit hole. I picked myself up, smiled lamely at the audience of concerned fellow travelers and headed to baggage claim. What I didn’t know at the time was that even though the injury was bloodless, it may not be insignificant. There is the possibility down the road of a tear in the retina of my left eye. It took five days for the orbital bones around the eye to become somewhat sore and lightly bruised. Sometimes you don’t know right away that you’ve been wounded. Consider the childhood scars on the heart that don’t surface until years later. You have to take a step back and consider the damages.

In this reflective state, I can’t help but think of my mother’s eye injury thirty years ago at age eighty-five. The one that happened when she tumbled in slow motion off the porch steps in Great Barrington while I watched motionless on a lawn chair under a Japanese maple. I remember the blood pooling in her eye, the trip to the emergency room in Albany, the surgeon’s failed efforts, and my mother’s one-eyed life in large print murder mysteries that continued for another fourteen years. Now, piece of flourless chocolate cake, if a tear should develop, the Minnesota doctor will approach me laser in hand. The floaters will scurry back to their lairs and the flashes of light will dissipate. I am hopeful.

I would prefer to have both eyes, the better to look around at my surprising life. I begin in the bedroom, because writing in bed is one of my greatest pleasures and I can stay in bed as long as I like. The bedroom is decorated with artifacts accumulated over our forty-six years together. There is the green marble standing lamp with the fringed bordello-style shade. My late brother-in-law bought it for Frank at a yard sale one day years ago when the two fabulous men were out antiquing. There is my friend Peggy’s print of a Ferris wheel, the little cars going round and round and upside down, my life with Frank and Peggy’s own life, always in motion. There is a bookcase of Judaica including a copy of Maus, now banned by a school board in Tennessee. Your nine year old can get gunned down in a classroom in Tennessee, but you may not be able to read this book.

People in high places may demand that you close your mind, shut your eyes so that you can’t see the beauty in this life or its injustice, even though you are drawing close, astonishingly close, to that final chapter. Like your mother who couldn’t see you when you visited her in the nursing home in Berkeley. Best to lead the life you’ve been led to, read the books you haven’t read, and share your tears with the ones you love.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.