The first time, you stood back in a kind of awe. Don’t you recall?
Me in the Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt with the sleeves cut off … my yardstick arms elbow-danced in the stove light as I made us breakfast. Delight flickered across your face. It sprinkled around your apartment like fairy dust as you darted for the disposable camera to document my cuteness.
ESPN’s SportsCenter chattered in the background. A heeler on high-alert, I had one ear up for your Lakers – now ours – while you were out of the room.
I remember those early days when it became our house, when we became us.
I liked me best when I was your Laker girl. My too-wide hips fitting your carpenter jeans a bit too snuggly for my stupid vanity. It forced me to laugh because it was obvious how conceited I was. My face gives it away, flushing from the red stub of my proud nose.
That’s why you were so all-consuming, you see?
For all else, every other skin I tried on, you were the one I liked most.
Riding on your arm into a crowded room, everyone else began to float. Even me. You’d hold onto my hand, and I’d stare at your strength in wonder and fascination. It felt like a peacock quill, floating out of my hat, demanding space for its grandeur.
You made it okay – easier somehow – to navigate all that. It felt like so much to undertake alone. Together, we could rise above it.
The years have gone by now. The kitchen has gone from one setting to another. It’s changed more than once, twice, three times, more… We’ve seen new versions of us, too, like Ken & Barbie playing dress-up through the decades.
I felt unsure of myself for most of it.
Ready to hit the ground running? Yes. Always.
Well, I try to be. Though, I didn’t always know where to go before everything seemed to catch up at once. Darting in one direction after another, I couldn’t focus on what was most pressing. I see my effort spread out across the years and think of how much more I could have accomplished if only I’d gotten out of the way.
Though, no one can fully prepare you unless you’re willing to let go of your body’s own resistance.
I couldn’t let go.
For a long time, I thought it was just my body.
I kept tripping over something. I was still wearing your old clothes. They’re too big for me now. We were never built the same either, were we? Plus, I’m harder on things.
I begin rattling off one reason after another to excuse myself for making another purchase. I’ll roll around on the ground and agonize over it.
Don’t worry about it, though. I’m always rolling around on the floor.
Except sometimes, it’s because I’m fixing things.
See now, you and your dad are giving me the nod, as I strip and mend wires underneath the washing machine in my pencil skirt. The front-load washing machine, I say, holding up my trophy trout of sorts.
You love that memory.
I do, too. Because I could fit that skirt. Because my oversized hips, flat hindquarters and lanky legs looked decent in it. And mostly, because I felt more confident in it. Confident enough to fix a front-load washing machine.
Though, there’s more to it than that. The approval that I felt I needed is apparent. It laughs at me from the number of times I’ve told the story and the male gaze I use to tell it. It mocks me from my veiled attempt to distract both of us from the work I need to do on me.
I always acknowledged it as pride. It was a half-hearted attempt at self-awareness.
There were hidden layers beneath the exterior I was unwilling to acknowledge at the time. I masked them under reminders of how important it is to take pride in one’s accomplishments – a blanket of faux self-assurance to tuck my pride in tight.
Meanwhile I was running all over creation, blasting a story where I save the day in a skirt…
Obviously, I still need reminders to sit with things a while longer. Perhaps, we all do. To think and rethink what may be hidden underneath … if only we’d look a little harder.
Since I’m stubborn in my impatience, refusing to allow myself more time, it’s often you who’s sent to save me from myself. My hero, however, doesn’t always look like Superman to me. Sometimes, he’s plain-old, annoying Clark Kent.
Yet, whenever you say or do something and it forces me to pause, that’s usually when I discover the wisdom that’s been waiting. It waits for me if I’d just take another moment with myself. If I’d choose to be brave and confront myself. To see me without you. Without anything else to hide behind.
So I slip you off in the darkness. I wash and fold you with care. A grin and a sharp nod, I hold you up to admire you in the light before I tuck you in tight. I’ll put you on again, I think to myself, and you’ll love it.
You always come back in style.
And didn’t I always have more of a thing for Clark Kent than his alter ego?