Ugly

As an aside, this week's short writing piece does not coincide at all with the poem. Also, after Lauren read it, she described the poem as "like getting punched in the gut" and "brutally sad."

xo,
KMJ

***

I am not a cute runner.

Before I go any further, I need to state that there cute runners. My cousin is one of them. All of her marathon  pictures look like Nike ads. Her husband is the same way. After they sent me pictures of the Ironman they ran last September, I wanted to know if they had been retouched. They were too perfect.

I am not one of those runners. I'm pushing some extra weight.  I don't have a beautiful stride, matching running clothes, or a bouncing ponytail. I'm usually moving pretty slowly. Watching me run is pretty ugly.

Despite all of this, I still run. I run because at the end of a long workout, I feel the way a Catholic is supposed to feel after they go to confession. Light. Refreshed. As if everything that's gone wrong in the past few days has been left behind me on the road.

I think, ultimately, that's worth a little ugliness.

***

How It Ends

She loved to cook and he to eat, so that's how it all began. She would cook. He would eat. They would talk about work or their spouses, perhaps drink some wine. Her recipes became more elaborate, his waistline, larger. They both made overtures at something else, but it never went anywhere because it couldn't go anywhere. He carried home leftovers from her meals; she took away his laughter at her jokes. One night, after years of food and wine, laughter and a little sadness, he wiped his lips and cleared his throat. "I'm leaving my wife," he said. "For who?" she asked. "Someone else." He replied. They were silent for awhile, until she met his eyes and said "I have an early meeting." He left and walked down the block, realizing halfway to his car that he had forgotten the leftovers she always prepared. He went back and rang the bell. She never answered. 

Table

On having furniture.

Love,

LLM

***

The transition to adulthood happens slowly and all at once. You wake up one morning and think, “Wow. Things are different.” But then you start to look back at the past few years or months and you realize the change has been happening for a long time. I didn’t notice I was an adult until I’d lived in my apartment for about eighteen months, but when I thought about it, I realized that the shift started to take place when I bought my dining room table.

I had moved into the apartment less than a month before I bought the table. Most of the furniture I had was handed down to me from my mother. A love seat, chairs, side tables that had belonged to her, that had been replaced in recent years as she and Ruth established their home together—these pieces came with me. They came with stories. My bed is cast iron and had been my grandmother’s when she was young. My dresser belonged to a great-grandfather. My mom and dad found the rocking chair at an antique store. The bookcases were new but the books I put on them have tales of their own, and not simply those between the covers. Even the desk, which had been bought as a graduation gift a few months earlier, already came to the apartment with a story—one for which I have yet to be forgiven.

The dining room table was the one major thing I lacked in this new apartment of mine, this new life of mine. It was my first major purchase for my life as a nonstudent. The dining room chairs sat, unassembled, on my living room floor for about a week. They stubbornly refused to be put together. The allen wrench wouldn’t tighten the screws properly, and the pieces wouldn’t line up correctly. And so for a week I allowed them to settle in to the space, to realize that my home is a good place for dining room furniture. It’s a silly thing to say—that these inanimate objects needed to get comfortable. Somehow, though, I thought it might work.

It did. A week after I bought the table and chairs, I assembled them with no problems.

The table is a powerful symbol in Christianity. The altar is where we share our story as followers of Christ; where we come together to celebrate and grieve, be complacent and frustrated, give and receive. The table at home is no different. As I assembled those chairs and that table, I knew it would be a place of gathering and goodness.

I knew it would be a place for stories.

Firsts

We have been rather remiss in posting.

I'd like to insert a list of perfectly valid reasons--reasons that would make the readers of this blog be both awed by the writing and dazzled by the courageousness of writing in the face of so many obstacles. That's the kind of list I would like to have.

To be perfectly honest, on my part, I haven't been writing. I've been desperately trying to track down the last bit of writing I did, hoping and praying that dear God I really have written something since November, but it's simply not true. After finishing my thesis and classes last semester, I did not want to have anything to do with my computer except watch Netflix. I have been absolutely lazy. I read three novels and spent the rest of break zoning out in front of the television. I'm not particularly proud of that choice, but after 2.5 years of having comps/language exam/thesis to worry about during breaks, I was grateful for the opportunity to shut my brain down for an extended period.

It. Was. Glorious.

It's also slightly remiss to say that I did nothing except watch television. I went to Christmas parties. I cooked. I met new people. I visited with old friends and family. I met actual people who read this blog and are not related to me. I went vintage thrifting. I read three months of back issues of Harper's Bazaar. I didn't check my grades. I lounged and did laundry and gloated over the variety of expensive kitchen gadgets I received as Christmas presents. I updated the list of my most loved/most hated words. Generally, I just recharged for this semester.

But now. It's time to get back into academic and other-kinds of writing. So, without further procrastination:

Our theme: Firsts

***

Dinner


It was not veal piccata or bouillabaisse. It was not boeuf bourguignon. Not steak helene. Not puttanesca. It was certainly not braised scallops or mussels cooked in wine. It was not any of the other gourmet meals I would make through the years. It was just a chicken, breaded in herbs and the closest I could approximate  to my grandmother's recipe. Fried in a skillet while I was drinking a Pabst and we were talking idly about the day, the plans for the weekend, the weather. It was nothing Julia Child would provide for a dinner party, but sitting at kitchen table in our jeans, with our beer and the late early-summer sun, it was everything I wanted.