Lobster Claws
There’s a picture of Jane and me that mom loves. Jane and I both hate it. Before we were going out to dinner mom was trying to take a picture of us. I wasn’t keen on it, Jane was, and Jane knows exactly what to do when I’m being sulky about taking a picture. She pinches me right in the side in a technique I’ve dubbed “lobster claws.” The camera goes off, she’s smiling impishly, and I’m in the midst of laughing and rounding on her.
This picture came after several lobster attempts. Jane was dying, I was fed up. Both of our eyes are closed. This one’s in black and white. Jane and I both like messing with the color so we don’t usually have many black and white ones. Jane’s in the middle of laughing so she’s not keen on it because she doesn’t have her perfect smile. I don’t have any make up on and I don’t look like the self I’ve come to know.
But I’ve been looking at that photo. I was annoyed in it, that’s obvious. But I look at it a little harder and I can tell, I can remember, that I was having just as good a time as Jane. As much as I didn’t want a photo right then and there, mom was taking it and Jane was pinching me and however much I hated the idea, I loved them. In the photo I end up smiling, getting the better of myself. I’m terribly stubborn, but in that moment the walls came crumbling down and I was just starting to show how much I enjoyed it.
Five weeks is a long time to spend in a place that’s neither home nor abroad. Hard as I try I still can’t describe this place. With less than a week to go here I’ve realized that I’ve been picking out all the things that makes me hate here, whatever here is. It’s my way of making it okay to go back and not come back for a long time. It’s my way of compiling and organizing and proving to myself that this isn’t the place I’m meant to be, and it’s good to go somewhere else. I think that’s healthy. But with one week left, however much I’ve wanted to leave, the little good details are trickling back in. I can’t stay like this. This is a rut and it’s not healthy. But I will miss mom and Jane. And May and Kevin and riding and piano and cello and all the things I already miss all the time.
There are plenty of things I don’t miss anymore. I think it’s good that I know that now, and I can separate the things that are part of the past, the things I’ll look back fondly on and move on from, and the things that deserve to keep a place in my life right now, that deserve to be missed.
In that photo Jane’s blonde and I still don’t really know how to dress. It’s old, but in pinpoints exactly what it is about family and a place that was home. It’s not all good, it’s not all bad, it’s not all funny, it’s not all annoying. It’s everything mixed up an in between and it’s a snapshot in time like that one that makes you remember all of it. When you remember it instead of romanticize it, that’s when you’ll miss it the most.
