This Confluence, This Confoundment, This Commonly Broken

On trying to vacation while it hurts

When you bring your poor, falling-down self to the beach, your head hurts. The toothache with no discernible cause throbs the moment you wake up and stretch on the king-size bed that you dream about the other 51 weeks of the year and ruins the moment you have been waiting for–that gleeful shot of joy: I am finally here.

When you bring your poor, falling-down self to the beach, you stand in a long, hot line for ice cream at the best place in town, just like every other time you’ve arrived at this place in the last decade. You consume your one scoop of lemon streusel in a waffle cone on the two-block walk to the beach, where you watch the sunset while your children sit on a sandbar far, far into the bay. You wait for that feeling that always comes: I am here, and I can breathe now.

Instead, your right temple throbs. The feeling eludes you. You look at your husband with sorrow and say, “I think I need to go back now,” anticipating the Advil waiting on the counter at the guest house and the minutes between now and when you can curl up and sleep the discomfort away.

In his lyrical exploration Inciting Joy, poet Ross Gay describes himself as “this confluence, this confoundment, this stew, this commonly broken and ever-molting creature that is for the time being a Ross Gay.” You read this on the back porch swing after waking in pain on the first day of your vacation.

On the beach the night before, you remember Joy Harjo’s poem about how we bring “our poor, falling down-selves” to the dinner table, and you know now that the dinner table includes the beach, includes the morning light sifting onto the bed at the vacation house while your head aches, includes every moment, includes life, and you also remember the time you read the poem and realized what we are to do with these poor, falling-down selves: We are to hold them gently. To say, “It’s okay you feel that way.” To go soft, soft with our hurting selves. 

So you do that. You say, “Good job, self.” You quote Anne Spencer as you rub the back of your poor, falling-down self, cooing, “You’ve had a hard time,” haven’t you, “bringing it to me / from the ground / to grunt through the noun,” and you remember how that poem ends, and your head still hurts though the Advil is helping and you affirm it’s true out on that swing inciting joy amid your own confluence and confoundment:

“feeling seeing smelling touching
—awareness
I am here!”

You are only ever-molting. You might emerge at any moment. You are, indeed, here.

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