The bagel that broke the camel’s back; some poems
I was recently in a Telehealth therapy session, as one is, and I had Doordashed Starbucks about an hour before. My car is totaled, and it is stupid for someone in my financial situation to Doordash ANYTHING, but hear me out. I’ve been so sad and depressed I haven’t been eating, right? Well, if a small child stops eating, the pediatrician will say, or at least I know of A pediatrician who will say, “She needs to eat. If that means chicken nuggetts every night, that means chicken nuggetts every night. But she has got to eat.”
That is how I found myself Doordashing Starbucks. I got an everything bagel. Everything bagels are my comfort food, and when I am so sad I cannot eat I count on the everything bagel to carry me through.
When I was a nanny for a few weeks at the beginning of the school year, the family I nannied for always had everything bagels. I woke up around 5/ 5:15 AM to get to their house on time every morning. My alarm would go off to the song “Dreams” by The Cranberries and I would drowsily climb out of my dorm room bed into the chilled September morning toting my Alani, phone, and backpack. When I was tired in the morning, and struggling to muster the energy to get up, I would remember how much I adored my job and the opportunity to love on these kiddos, as well as how much better my day would be after a morning spent with them. I would also remember that there would always be a special kind of everything bagel waiting for me in their pantry, and that I had to get up to go to my nanny job to get my everything bagel.
These everything bagels were special to me because sometimes they were one of the reasons I was able to get out of bed, and I had no idea where my nanny family got them, but they were the best everything bagels I had ever had. Now toasted? With a bit of butter and cream cheese?
My therapist and I paused our session when I got a notification from Doordash that my order was on the porch. After retriving my everything bagel and latte, I found my way back to my room to resume my session.
“That order was 3/5 of my ‘fun money’ budget, but it was worth it because I haven’t been eating.” I told her about the small child who didn’t eat anything other than chicken nuggetts, and how the pediatrician encouraged her parents to continue to feed her chicken nuggetts so that at least she would eat something.
We had already had a general check-in, so as I spread the cream cheese onto my everything bagel I began to say absentmindedly “I love everything bagels, they are my comfort food, because I used to have them every weekday-” before I could finish my sentence, tears pricked my eyes and I felt an overwhelming emotion, “Oh my God I’m about to cry over an everything bagel- I used to eat them for breakfast at my nanny family’s house.” In crisis mode for sometime now, there were a lot of things that had slipped off the radar and gone unprocessed. I realized in that moment how much I missed nannying for this family and how much they had meant to me.
They had let me go. They said they were working from home now. I wondered if it was because of my social media presence, and I blamed myself for that job loss.
As I began to break all over again with unprocessed grief, I fought back tears and took a bite of my everything bagel.
Sometimes it’s the everything bagel that breaks the camel’s back.
~
“There are days when the thought of leaving slips into my mind. It’s a thought that is dark and far from kind.” — “I’ve Never Seen a Moose in the Wild,” Tanner Olson
But I can’t leave, not yet.
For now I must stay, it will not be easy,
but I will find a way.
For I have hope I will see brighter days.
I know this, because life has not always treated me bad,
and I’ve had plenty of seasons where I’m not this sad.
I danced in the rain.
Hell, I’ve been kissed in the rain.
And I’ve been to book signings with authors, avid readers,
and champagne.
I can’t leave, not yet, because I still have poems to write,
about how through the darkness there has always been some light.
Despite my mourning,
I continue to make it to morning,
& when I do I get a snickerdoodle latte.
Full of tears & fears,
I find the courage to press on,
it’s always darkest before the dawn.
~
It was a funfetti cake;
it was 1/4 sheet.
It was multi-colored icing for the balloons;
it was black icing for the message.
The cake read “Happy 50th Birthday Daddy! I love you!”
I blew out 50 candles,
I made a wish.
A wish that, one day, one day soon,
you could come back.
You could come back, and I could cut you a slice
of funfetti cake.
I placed two slices on paper plates and placed
two paper plates on the table.
It was for you;
it was for me.
~
Billy Collins once wrote a poem about the rain in Portugal.
Ambitious, but what if I wrote a poem about the rain I am currently dissociatively mesmerized by — the rain in Chattanooga?
I would write about the humility of this place, how the skies are weeping raindrops as I weep teardrops and we are more alike than we are different.
Before my phone alarm goes off signaling the end of my break, beckoning me back to my place among the baristas behind the bar.
I’m always behind the bar.
I stare out the window, daydreaming of a day where I may dance in the rain in Chattanooga, reveling in its delicious desperation to be seen.
~
Some Mad Hope
I believe in some mad hope.
I believe that no matter how bad things seem, there is always the chance they will get better.
We persevere. We believe.
If we didn’t believe, why would we persevere?
Deep, deep down in our souls
Below the cynical pessimistic nature masking our dreams, telling us that they will never come true
The question shines through: what if they do?
maybe they will.
Whether or not we consciously want to admit it
I believe that we all hold onto some mad hope.
I think that it motivates us.
I think that it keeps us going.
We would not want to share our mad hope with anyone — because we are holding our breaths that it might just come true.
This hope is what keeps us alive. It keeps our heart beating. It keeps our heart bleeding.
Though our hopes may be insane, they keep us sane.
It’s a sense of adventure.
Because life may suck now,
But you’re sixteen and your whole life is in front of you.
You could do amazing things
You could go beautiful places
You could find awe-inspiring revelations in the otherwise everyday.
Because you’re sixteen and you cannot give up because why would you?
Maybe you will dance in the rain
And see God in the sunrise
And fall in love.
And maybe, just maybe,
Your some mad hope will become not just a hope
But a reality.
Because you’re only sixteen. You cannot give up yet.
