We stayed in for New Year’s Eve. When I met Larry, he was in a band, and I was in my twenties and liked to look hot and drink until 2am. We kissed a lot of midnight kisses over a DJ table, or with me on tiptoe, him stooping from the stage.
Last year we said no thank you, we have this house that we love, and we have a small bar of booze we already paid for, we’re good to stay home. This year we did the same but also did this:
Trying to be cute made us mess up, so we just sang the song and it felt cleansing and good in my chest. It was getting late once we got inside to my home office, in the glow of the lamps, editing the audio and video together. When I was younger, I fetishized time and what it symbolized: opportunity, change, more. I sat up in bed with my diary in my hand at 11:59pm on the day before several birthdays so I could be writing at exactly the moment I turned the next age. This year snuck in. Who knows what made me look, but at one point there it was, 12:00 on the laptop clock, and we kissed right there while the little versions of ourselves sang from the speakers.
I got the flu in December, right after Thanksgiving, where Larry and I hosted for the first time and I roasted—get this—chicken thighs instead of turkey, reveling in my insouciance, doing it MY way!, and then my dad brought a crock pot full of turkey breast anyway, and listen, it was delicious. We ate blueberry crumble (that’s right) and did a puzzle and listened to Chet Baker. Mom took pictures of me and Larry just before people left in, in which I’m bleary and smiling.
I remember saying to Mel that I was getting a predictable post-holiday cold. The next morning, I got up with my 5:30 alarm, stumbled to my studio where I meditated in the pre-sunrise dark and then lay down on the hardwood floor and fell asleep again. I moved to the couch and slept again until I heard Larry’s alarm, at which point I ran through the shower. Mallory, my manager and also mom to a toddler, could tell I had a fever. “Does your hair hurt?” she asked tenderly.
I went home at lunch that day, a Thursday. I had a 101 fever when I woke up in the guest bed the next morning, twisted in the sheets and lost among the weird pillows we keep in there.
This is fine!, I thought, in the style of the doomed dog. I’ll have the weekend to recover!
Every day was the same for the next week: I woke up with a fever, I emailed work, then cycled through thermometers and medicine and Netflix until I took the sleepy cherry syrup at 9pm and passed out in the same bed. This just… kept happening. I missed two rehearsals and five days of work. When the flu started to subside, I got an ear infection. You should feel like yourself in about a week, the doctor said as he prescribed me a z-pack. It was the ninth day I was sick. I choked down the first pill in the car.
He was right. I’d been sick, after which I was pretty sick for a couple days, and then pretty okay for a few more. The slowness of everyday sucked during the worst of it, but it was pointless and tiring to fight it. While I was pretty sick, I got dizzy at the grocery store. When I was pretty okay, I had to sit down three times while decorating the Christmas tree.
I laid on the couch before dinner. I read Jane Eyre for the first time (!!!). I did the crossword on my phone. I stopped setting my 5:30 alarm in order to get more sleep. I didn’t write this newsletter. I cancelled plans. Then it was Christmas. I hibernated and healed. It ruled.
Hi <3
Here are some things that sound nice that you can do, perhaps especially if you live in Illinois, where recreational weed is legal now:
Listen to Lindy West read The Witches Are Coming (download Libby and get it from your library)
Draw as many of the same thing as you can in 3 minutes (my favorite thing to draw is Diet Coke cans, idk why, but please ask me to draw one anytime!)
Sit very still and eat an orange
Look out a window and watch the treetops for a few minutes and don’t do anything else while listening to Wakin on a Pretty Day:
Learn the Chandelier dance, using Ryan Heffington’s shorthand, and we’ll all do it for our parents after dinner:
Listening to Wilford Brimley read Twas the Night Before Christmas alone in my bed in 2019
Remember that year—you were still alive
and we came back to the farmhouse—still ours
after Christmas Eve—still at the Homer house,
where Grandma turned the heat up so high
we’d cool off in the garage, flapping the hems of our sweaters.
Yawning, we talked, awake late in the living room in the country.
I put out cookies, pretending I could be ironic.
/
That night we realized we both
brushed our teeth with
hot water. Your iPad jingled
the theme of a game I played
solo.
/
Remember, too, years earlier,
how we fell asleep in your bunk bed every time
despite the thrill of our plan:
crouching kids plotting to catch the gift-giver.
Listening to the same poem from the same cassette.
Surely you feared, too,
that if we rounded the familiar corner
late enough at night,
some mystery with no end
would end anyway.
I have more to say about Jane Eyre soon, I promise!!!!
I love you,
Lindsey