Cheese Cubes

Divide and conquer. The ultimate was to separate the family. You win. Now we grope at screens and things in solitude to try to satisfy us when what we really need is to hang out in a living room after mom cooked on a Thursday, listening to dad and uncle argue about the fan belt on the ford. Throwing cheese cubes at our brother in the glow of a cartoon on low volume.

I miss you. But I’m not sure I ever had you.

Did therapy help, or did it make the pitfalls of parenting criminal, give us the right to resent our caretakers who did their imperfect best? Honor thy mother and father is a simple ask, but that may have received its terminal diagnosis during Freud’s lifetime. Sure some parents are bad, and many are fuck ups, but what good did beating a dead horse ever do? Just left us with a bloodied, pulpy conscience, when we could have been instead coping by making fun of shit, going for a long run, looking a birds and how light hits the leaves on the ficus. Being and loving our imperfect selves.

Once you get the memo, throw it away. Holding it up to your eyeballs closer will not make it sink in deeper or truer.

Forgive your caretakers and move on. Go do nonsense things with your family. Sit in silence. Pick your butt. Throw cheese cubes at your brother.

If you don’t have a family, get mad. Get mad at the forces that led us here. Go to Mexico, see how families here hold each other, how the priorities are straight so they can hold each other. Look on into their glowing windows, on their illuminated porches, where the old ones sit and watch, the children play, and recognize your own poverty of spirit.

I don’t have any more advice.