I write late today. The Quarterly Art @ Suite 100 event combined with client duties kept me on my feet almost constantly for the past forty-eight hours. Sandwiched between two physically grueling days, five hours of sleep in the witching portion of Thursday night did little to forestall inevitable collapse. I melted into a pool of sobs 'round midnight last night, eight hours ago, and finally slept from one to six. Now I wait for two eggs, easy scrambled, at a French cafe while Brookside residents clad in summer khakis sip lattes and read the New York Times. At a nearby table, two indignant women debate the comparative merits of their co-workers, to my slight disgust.
Just as my breakfast arrives, the Hospital Hill run begins to trickle through Brookside and everyone on the patio turns to watch.
The coffee warms my belly and the potatoes sit comfortably against my teeth. I enjoy breakfast. I missed dinner yesterday and put half my lunch into the refrigerator. I find that only morning food and morning dining appeals to me. I often put nut-butter on crackers for nibbling on my porch and I frequent tables like this one, with the chattering of others drifting towards me.
I sip coffee and wonder if the women behind me know how clearly every word comes into my aged ears. Outside the window, a man who resembles a lawyer with whom I have done bitter battle raises a cell phone to his ear, while his ginger-headed companion munches on a piece of thick-cut toast.
My mother would have loved this place. I sit here in her stead, a year older than she ever got to be, resembling her only in the fierceness of my passionate defense of others, and the brittleness of the heart that beats in my breast. I have my father's fair skin and the deftness of word that comes down through the Corley blood. His broken spirit flutters its wings in some cave within my brain. The worst of both of them and the virtues of neither form the warp and the weft of my fabric. My flag cannot flutter in the wind; it hangs heavy on the pole.
I have been often warned that I need therapy, mostly recently this week by one who claims to love me. I shake my head. A client recently confessed that she does not "do" therapy well and I find kinship in that admission. Perhaps my healing would not have left such ragged scars if I had done the bulk of it with guiding hands. Perhaps many would have been spared the brutality of my unhealed ravings. Lacking that ministration, I am told, I remain difficult. I concede the point. I keenly feel my shortcomings but just as surely understand that such paths sadly cannot bear my weight or the peculiar stumbling of my clumsy feet.
Yesterday I heard Michelle Norris talking on the local public radio. She spoke at UMKC's conference on women of color. Her interview focused for the brief moment of my listening on The Race Card Project. Inspired by that exchange, my thoughts wandered to my brother Frank who has five children and one grandchild who can be called persons of color. I reflected on comments about life that I read on Frank's Facebook page. He seems so joyful. He seems at peace. I envy him.
I who find myself unable to eat in the afternoon and evenings have plowed through eggs and potatoes, with a full piece of that thick bread spread with macerated raspberries. I've drunk two cups of French Roast and pulled the bowl of fruit closer. I know I will finish it. I eat while my appetite presents itself, and as the day wanes, and I can no longer abide the smell of food, I will have some nourishment to sustain me.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
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