blisters and snow

A quiet Christmas day in Chicago, the snowiest since 1997. At noon, we took a walk to perform a good deed and visit a cat whose owners skipped town for three weeks. Except for the main thoroughfares, the side streets were still fairly pristine. Not much traffic and few pedestrians. “Twinkle snow, powdery snow” but same grey Chicago underneath. Gusts of wind sprayed our faces with showers of tiny ice needles.

We took the long way back so we could walk down Logan Boulevard and look at the trees: the gnarly branched catalpas, the squat apple trees, the arrow straight lindens glistening in the steel colored sky in all their fractal nakedness.

I phoned Texas. My mother couldn’t talk. Her mouth is full of blisters from the chemotherapy she started over a week ago to treat the secondary cancer in her liver. She had a few good days and her spirits were up, then the side effects. In the past three days she has refused the phone. Today I insisted. I said, “You can’t talk, but you can hear.” She struggled to mumble back something. I said, “I’m thinking of you and I send you all my love.” Then I felt guilty for forcing “all my love” on her. Her fragility only accentuates my clumsiness.

In the afternoon I baked a beautiful, perfectly textured, molasses-soaked, ginger upside-down pear cake. If you have three hours to spare, you, too, can enjoy this simple pleasure (Leslie Mackie’s Macrina Bakery & Café Cookbook).

Today, I try to string together disparate thoughts of snow, caramelized pears, and mouth sores. Pandora generates a Proustian concoction of haunting themes: Debussy’s Claire de Lune, Albéniz’ Mallorca, Chopin’s Prelude No. 4. Amid the snow blankets of memory, I hear her at the piano. Every night, after putting us to bed and finishing the days’ chores, my mother knuckled down. She also tried to practice during the day, but with five boisterous children these sessions often turned into harangues. As the years went by, she gradually stopped playing. Now, the neuropathy has damaged her hands for good.

We got three more inches of snow over night. The day is sepulchral grey.

tea in a cup

Yoko Ono at the BALTIC in 2009

Link: Flickr

Apparently, I'm over a 17 month long writer's block.

I sit down to document the first tea brewed in the white porcelain Japanese teapot I brought back from Texas a few weeks ago after visiting my ailing mother. It has been tucked away in her china cabinet for thirty years. Did she ever serve tea in all that time?

The pot is similar to one I’ve had for as long as my mother’s has sat in her cabinet, a gift from a friend back in college. I always liked its simplicity, its pleasant round shape and wicker handle. The lid broke years ago and the handle was warped from water damage. So, as soon as I spotted my mother’s, I made a comment about inheriting it. She told me to take it already, along with a set of seven cups and six saucers. She had no explanation for the mismatch.

Before pouring, I wonder if it will make a difference to drink out of this wide mouth, paper-thin cup sitting quietly on its saucer. The green liquid streams from the spout into the white bowl. Bubbles rise and huddle in the middle, a sparkling island. Wisps of steam rise quickly from the inside walls of the cup. I take the first sip. Not strong enough.

I get up and walk over to the kitchen with the teapot and add another teaspoon of green leaves. My kitchen is bordering on chaos. One more dirty dish, one more can or package out of place and I’ll have to call in experts. A baking sheet is soaking on top of the sink, which in turn is filled with haphazardly placed frying pans, chopping blocks and assorted silverware. I’ve dirtied every single plate, large and small. They are stacked on the side of the sink along with multiple cups, empty food cans, a flower vase…

I return to the sun-drenched dining room. The snowy rooftops sparkle in the distance. The table is cluttered with items from yesterday’s baking party, a watering can, fabric swatches, an external hard drive, Lévi_Strauss’ The Savage Mind with the Continental Airlines bev nap marking the last page I read on my way back to Chicago, thread spools, a grocery list… I sip more tea.

Motivation for writing: a need for ritual, some deliberate action to jolt me back into consciousness after days (if not weeks) of overdosing on celebrity gossip, tales of bad plastic surgery, bizarre crimes… Yes people, this is how I get away from it all these days. It is somehow more palatable to gawk at Michaela Romanini’s visage than to sit with my pain. The important thing is to dissociate, to not think about one’s mother slowly dying of cancer in another part of the country, passing blood in her stool, running fevers several times a day, blaming it all on the excess sauce that dad put in her eggs yesterday morning. Extra sauce is more comprehensible than metastasizing cells in one’s liver.

Last week, Yoko Ono reminisced about tea and laughter with John Lennon on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. This afternoon, I grieve alone for my mother over tea brewed in a teapot that has sat in a china cabinet for the same number of years. Our family home is stuffed with a lifetime of silent objects frozen in time. Mine is a disarray of daily living, a jumble of orphans screaming for attention.

I lift the lid on the teapot and peer inside: a private lily pond, the emerald green of forty minutes ago now the color of urine.