There isn't a 'new normal'

There is no return to the point we were at before, it really is a state of being that Barbara Combyn captures so terrifyingly well in _Who was Changed and Who Was Dead_. Summer holidays are in full swing but this year, there are no outbound planes, no frantic last minute packing.  

Late last month we closed the Gallery restaurant at work this month to make space for new social-distancing and to begin the Christmas Season prep.  It made me a bit a bit sad.  I first came to the shop in 2010 as a Christmas temp in Customer Relations.  I had been working as an office manager/compliance/den mother for a private algorithmic trading company and just…I couldn’t stay. I didn’t HATE the job and I had a mostly good team of people to work with but…it was ‘fine’ when it was part-time and I could do other projects, but I felt drained being there full-time.   Even the quarterly bonuses don’t make up for it.  After my son’s untimely arrival and departure, I took maternity leave to try and heal up. Ironically, that was how we figured out the ongoing stomach issues were UC instead of just a vaguely undefined IBS. Auto-immune conditions for the win! Anyway, I went back to work for keeping-in-touch days. My first day back, we had people from our Austin head office over and was waiting by the lift when I arrived ‘Rachel! You’re here! How is the baby?!’ No one had told this sweet man that the baby had died. I had to tell him. His face crumpled and he started to cry.  We had a new hire standing behind him. ‘Hi. I don’t always lead with news of a dead baby. I’m Rachel.’ Always pithy, this one. Diffuse, diffuse. 

Don’t worry: the day gets more awkward.  From there, I ran into one of the senior partners, a tall ex-college football player. He lumbered over me at 6’5 with his booming voice. ‘Rachel! What are you doing here?! I am so sorry about the baby! It must be terrible for you.’ Then this giant bear of a man, HE almost started to cry. I’m typing this out, and I’m laughing a bit, shaking my head ruefully.

 The ‘Get the Hell Out’ bells had started to chime but I ignored them a bit longer. I could handle this. I could comfort these people, pretend it was all copacetic. I could take their grief and make it more than mine.  I could pretend I didn’t hear an infant crying distantly at all hours or that milk didn’t spill out of my breasts every time I saw another mother feeding her child. And I did, for about 2 months until I wound up in the hospital with bleeding ulcers. Because THAT is what pageant queens, what the nice girls, the good girls, from the Midwest and the Deep South, from the East Coast, from the Plains, from anywhere DO: we put the needs of others first. We fake it until we make it. We put Vaseline on our teeth so we can smile pretty for longer. We fluff our hair and walk through fine mists of Elnet so our hair and make-up set.  We make sure the cushions are fluffed and the buffet table is stocked and that we remember all the details so we can scrapbook about them later when we vent our spleens, right up until we can’t anymore. We shine the silver, fold the laundry and the poof! we become the harridan, the seer, the oracle. Or we wind up dead, slit writs in the bathtub, empty bottles of pills falling out of our hands on to the carefully vacuumed carpet.  We always make sure we have on the clean underwear, just in case. Just in case.  I decided to take a pass on that version of life events, thanks very much.   

I packed in job late August of 2010.  ‘You cain’t go wrong with a good list, Rachel,’ my mom used to tell me. So I made a list of all of the things I had ever done that made me happy, that caused me skip down the street and hum under my breath. I made a second list of the things that made me feel lighter than a lemon chiffon cake when I thought about doing them for gainful employment. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, started to plan side trips. I had been sticking close to home, having been told it wasn’t safe for me to make any changes, I just needed to focus one being a ‘good wife.’ ‘We’ll have a summer party. We’ll try again.’ We didn’t even an autopsy back yet.  When someone we love dies, our inner compass goes a bit tilt-a-whirl.  

Late that September, I met my friend D for a lunch time concert and coffee near Fortnum’s.  We popped in after the concert.. We had met through a mutual Czech friend and became friends over intense table tennis tournaments and long walks around Skalice.  At one point, I called D ‘the Hungarian Whizz Kid,’ which in the echo of the room sounded like ‘the Hungarian Biscuit,’ which is how I think of him, even now.   We wandered over to Fortnum’s afterwards and stood on the 1^st floor, looking at florid china. I watched the floor staff buzzing around. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a shop girl,’ I said, idly.  ‘Maybe in stationery.’

Then I went to Prague, spent my birthday on a rooftop in Old Town looking at sky, at my favourite bridge, two up from the Charles Bridge, which also something but not my favourite, thinking ‘Yes, I think I’ll manage. I don’t know how. Or why.’  I came back and sent my CV into Fortnum’s on a whim, left for a few days in France, barely aware that I was already cooking up Helena.  I got back to an email calling me in for an interview.  Life kept going. 

Ten years later, I've returned to the Shop, having just celebrated my 1 year anniversary.  It is a strange-making feeling, this realisation, a combination of elation and sadness. So much life and loss -- so often amplified -- has occurred during this 10 years, I don't know how I've come mostly full circle, but slightly off the point of departure.  You never get back to where you were before. There isn't a wormhole for that, such as I have been able to find. To be honest, I don't know what I would do with such a portal if I did find it.