silence is golden
"But my eyes still see-eee"
For someone who overthinks practically everything, some of the scariest moments in life provide me with a partially paralyzing clarity. There is nothing to think about or do other than get from point A to point B. Once I was trapped in a whiteout1 with my mom and grandparents. As we veered half onto the grass between the two highways, everyone was panicked (myself included), but all I remember saying was, “Well, we can’t stay here”.
I went into a similar state when I got a call two weeks ago that my dad had been in an accident.
Let me start by saying everyone is okay. Everyone is alive and recovering (some have more recovery to do than others). We all agree my dad was incredibly lucky that things weren’t worse. It’s a good, often repeated adage, “it could have been so much worse,” because it isn’t lost on any of us just how much worse.
I got the call in the diner on the west side. Something about a motorcycle accident and maybe a broken ankle. I needed to get home. What ensued were attempts at comfort from a close friend and a futile search for cabs that made my overwhelming need to get from point A to point B incredibly frustrating and unnecessarily difficult. I ended up on the 72nd Street bus, traveling from Broadway to First just so I could feel like I was moving. In such an intense moment, I thought I should be sprinting, barreling, speeding to my destination. Not stopping at every. single. avenue.
Over an hour later, I was finally sitting in the emergency room waiting room doing absolutely nothing other than replaying the same lacking facts over and over in my mind. It was comforting to have closed the distance between points, but now there was nothing to do. No next task. Once seeing my dad became a tangible option, I began obsessing over what I would say. I wanted to know what the right thing was, but I didn’t. What we could possibly talk about at a time like this? This was my scary all-consuming thought as I waited for my stepmother’s visit to be over (they only allowed one visitor at a time) in what became one of the longest fifteen-minute stretches of my life.
As someone who has spent the past three weeks selling herself as a writer to everyone who will listen - networking myself towards insanity - it’s hard to accept when I don’t have the words. I hate when I can’t come up with a phrase to lighten a mood, make sense of my feelings, or simply fill the silence. That’s what I’m supposed to be good at.
It’s why I started this newsletter for fuck’s sake.
My stepmother flew out of the emergency room wing and I ran in. There, I was met with the total chaos of a trauma hospital on a Friday afternoon. No soap opera can capture the madness of being in a place like this. There were people in handcuffs. Beds in the hallway. Yelling, running, and bones sticking out of bodies where they shouldn’t, all right in front of your face.
I will never have to wonder if I missed my calling in medicine.
In my efforts to keep my head down and follow the nurse in front of me (hoping to respect the privacy of all the people stuck outside the curtained-off rooms) I nearly missed my dad. He too was in the hallway. He started giving me instructions about where to take his jewelry and what to tell people.
And standing there… in this manic Bronx trauma hospital hallway, life suddenly seemed so absurd. In the kind of moment you dread all your life - seeing a loved one seriously hurt and in pain - here we were talking about rings and how I should still go to the Jersey Shore next weekend for a friend’s birthday. I’m standing in the hallway, trying to have a nice moment while jumping out of the way every thirty seconds for some nurse, doctor, or patient to be wheeled past. Before I left I grabbed his hand in the hope that the gesture would say everything I didn’t know how to. I wanted to impart something more meaningful than the “I love you”s and “I’m sorry”s and “it’s going to be okay”s which couldn’t seem to capture how much I felt or cared.
Later our family would hang out in the hospital post-leg surgery, going through my dad’s intake items like they were presents from Santa Claus and guessing what movie was playing on his roommate Manny’s TV.2 As the conversation stalled and our group's attention went to a Fast and Furious movie3 that had replaced Manny's previous action flick, and my dad observed that this felt like when he visited his own father in the hospital thirty years earlier and they watched his roommate's TV in silence to avoid an extra TV fee.
For whatever reason, this anecdote is my only way of making sense of the entire event. The togetherness of sitting in silence watching someone else’s TV. While trying to define myself through words, I’ve forgotten how much can be accomplished without them.
The absurdity of life never stops. One day the interview for an unpaid internship holds enough power to ruin your entire afternoon. The next, it doesn’t matter. One minute you’re finding out when your parent will be able to walk again. The next, your most crucial task is scouring the hospital for a working bedside table.4 A day later you're back in your dad's hospital room. His roommate is gone. You have the bathroom to yourselves and everyone's finally settling into the new bizarre routine. Then, nurses and corrections officers flood the room to prepare a bed for your dad’s new roommate, who will waltz in a few minutes later in an orange D.O.J. jumpsuit and ankle shackles.5
I can’t adequately bring the meaning of those days to these paragraphs. But holding someone’s hand. Watching TV in silence. Being there. Within all that, there are a million little mundane things worth doing to show someone they don’t have to face the absurdity alone.
Outfit of this Era:
It’s been mostly sweatpants I’m afraid, but I did capture this little gem the other night:
This Era’s Recommendations:
Just the Funny Parts by Nell Scovell - Not only is this memoir delightful (and not in a doing your homework on the industry kind of way), it got me through quite a few hours in hospital waiting rooms.
The New York Botanical Gardens.
Bagels.
Playing LÉON’s Circles on repeat until the Spotify stats make Kate Bush jealous.6
Jet Skiing.
HOLY FVCK by Demi Lovato - I’m convinced this is the perfect in between life stages and feeling stuck album. Catholicism meets BDSM with a splash of hope on the last track.
Pickles.
Spending all day binging Never Have I Ever Season 3.
One more picture from the garden just for fun.
For you Southern Californians, a whiteout is an insane blizzard that makes everything around you practically indistinguishable, which can be obviously dangerous if you find yourself on the highway. It happened to me in Ohio because of course it did.
It was The A-Team with Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper.
I’m 97% sure it was Furious 7.
We never got a working table.
This is a true story I swear to God, and I can’t come up with a better way to share how hilarious it was other than to lay it out exactly as it happened.
Hope you repeat readers enjoy this reference.