What does being in “pot and lid” love look like? Well, I can tell you what it doesn’t look
like. It doesn’t look like arguments and
sneers and shrugs and backs being turned on one another. It doesn’t consist of meanness and spite and
petty silliness. It doesn’t sound angry
all the time. It doesn’t leave you
feeling diminished every single day of your life. It doesn’t disappoint you every bloody time
you turn around, or feeling like a fool for believing in it. It doesn’t make you think that maybe loving
is just another mistake you’ve made in your life. One that you have to keep making, day after
day, despite knowing in your gut that your desperation for love is never going
to get you loved in return. At least,
not by this person.
You know what love looked like to me when I was growing
up? Love looked like laughter. It was teasing and flirting and
silliness. A good kind of
silliness. It was hugs and kisses and
giggles and affection. It was a pot of
tea made every day at four o’clock. It
was an effort made for one another. It
was my mom putting a comb through her hair and putting on lipstick right before
my dad got home, just to make sure she looked pretty for him. Not because she had to, but because she
wanted to. Little efforts made to make
each other’s existence a tiny bit more pleasant, a little easier. Notes left on the kitchen counter about where
they were, when they’d be home. Every
single one of them signed with x’s and o’s.
Waving from the picture window every time someone went out somewhere,
because “you never know what might happen”.
They wanted each other’s last glimpse of them to be of a smiling face,
blowing kisses. THAT is what love looked
like to me.
I was privileged to watch that emotion in action for
twenty-four years. I watched two
imperfect people try very hard to make sure that each knew how much the other
loved them. It was by no means
perfect. As much as a child can
comprehend how their parents’ wrangle their marriage, I knew that there were
days when one or the other (or sometimes both) were not doing well. Migraines played a part. Silences sometimes did, too. There were little things, frustrations that
came out as sighs or cupboard doors banged shut. The one thing I never heard was yelling. Hard to believe, maybe, but it was true. When I was in elementary school, I went over
to play at a friends’ house. We
overheard her parents yelling at each other.
I was scared, because I’d never heard adults yell at each other. My friend shrugged it off. She’d heard it before, obviously, and I guess
it wasn’t as shocking to her anymore. I
still remember standing in her basement, listening to those angry grown-ups,
wanting to leave and yet too scared to go upstairs to get my coat.
When I met Nick, I thought he was handsome, charming and
very, very kind. He was what people call
“a nice guy”. I think what impressed me
about him the most was how he listened to me when I spoke. Actively listened to me, which felt like the
freshest breath of air I’d taken in years.
Actually, it took me a while to figure out why I enjoyed talking to him
so much: he didn’t make me feel like
talking to me was a chore, some horrible burden that he was desperate to put
down the first chance he got. That was
(and continues to be) a gift, plain and simple.
You never know how nice it is be listened to, until you don’t have
someone like that in your life. Your
mother doesn’t count (sorry, Momma). She
is obligated in a purely biological way to listen to you, even if the only
thing driving her is guilt. You know how
most moms are, I think. My mother is a
dear, kind woman. My running joke is
that if I told my mom I was thinking of setting my hair on fire, she’d say “Oh! I always thought you’d look wonderful with
your hair on fire!” She is a sweetie,
that’s for sure. More on that good woman
later.
No, the nicest thing about Nick wasn’t his singing (I hadn’t
known him long enough for that!) or his encyclopedic knowledge of fishing. It was the simple fact that he was a good
listener. He laughed at my jokes and
asked lots of questions. He wanted to
know what I liked, what was important to me, what wasn’t. It was so nice to have fun with someone. To laugh and laugh and not be told I was
laughing too loud and other people were looking. And that was all in the first meal at the
Fish Hut.
The next day, Mr. Wrong told me to wake up because he was
going to work. He informed me that his
cousin (Nick) would be “taking care of me” for the day. How kind.
Being pawned off on a near-stranger on my first full day in
Jamaica. Just the kind of special
treatment that I’d left home to get away from.
Sigh… Luckily, Nick seemed happy enough to be my guide for the
morning. We walked up to the highway to
wait for a cab, which didn’t take more than a few minutes to arrive. Since I needed to get to town to exchange my
U.S. cash for JA dollars, our first stop was a little town further down the
coast called Falmouth.
You know how it feels when you open the oven door to bake
something? Well, that was what it felt
like getting out of the taxi in Falmouth at 8 o’clock in the morning. I felt like a cheeseburger under a heat lamp
at McDonald’s. In next to no time, sweat
was running down my face (and everywhere else), which was already a nice shade
of crimson. There were school kids
everywhere, all done up in full school uniforms. Business men and women in suits. I felt ill just looking at them, thinking how
much hotter it would be to have to wear dress clothes in this temperature. The
funny thing was: no one seemed to notice
the heat. Sort of like no one here
notices the snow. It is what it is, but
it’s not like people’s lives come to a grinding halt because of it. I just wish I could ignore the heat the way
they do.
As for my tour guide?
Well, Nick was busy keeping an
eye on me, making sure I didn’t step in front of any oncoming traffic. Meanwhile, I was suddenly shy, and wondering
what exactly to talk about with this guy in the clear light of day. All I could think about was that this
probably wasn’t how he wanted to spend his day:
trailing around after some goofy white lady with a bad case of verbal diarrhea. I exchanged some cash, and then decided to
buy some groceries for the house.
Grocery shopping in Falmouth was an exercise in extreme
patience for this spoiled Canadian, considering there wasn’t one big store
where we could buy everything we needed.
Nope. We had to go to a butcher
and stand in line and then hope they had what we wanted. For vegetables, we had to go to the stalls in
the open-air market. Need some rice?
Well, off to another shop we went. No
matter where you went, air-conditioning was almost non-existent. When there was an oscillating fan bolted to a
wall somewhere, I was so grateful, it was crazy. The few stores that did have air conditioning
felt so cold, they gave me chills. When we finally had everything we wanted, I
looked at the few bags and thought what had taken us hours to get in Falmouth
would have taken about twenty minutes at any Canadian grocery store. Forget the fact that now we had to walk all
the way back to the taxi area and wait around in the heat for enough people who
wanted to go back the way we’d come.
Next entry: The Lid & The Pot Jump Over the Moon
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