"Life Is Tartar Sauce"I didn't know why I was angry today. I felt it like the backdrop of my day and I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't about the phone situation - that was going to be remedied eventually, and I had already chosen to freak on Friday and leave the freak behind. I had a few calls that were fun - lovely women with whom I laughed and who ordered higher-priced items like iPads and such. And I had the super holiday-stupid calls - people freaking out, pulling an attitude, blah blah blah. Jesus! Do you REALLY think it's worth all of this tsuris??? HARDLY! I went to the lunchroom to eat my avocado sandwich, and I realized that what I felt, like a tom-tom in the background of my emotional calm, was anger. I searched in my mind for what could be bugging me and couldn't find it. Weird. I asked Joe, who came to join me for lunch, if he ever felt things that he couldn't figure out a reason for. He's young. Twenty-seven. He barely understood the words coming out of my mouth, but he took a stab at it and nailed it in one: "Anger, you mean? Or love?" "Yeah," I said, and left it at that. He had no answer and that was okay. I went back to work after lunch. I didn't want to be there, and I didn't NOT want to be there. I just felt disenchanted with pretty much everything. Just...blah. And anger. When an Indian gentleman called to tell me that he had gone to pick up his order at the store in wherever-the-fuck-he-lives and that it wasn't there, I was ready to help him. Until he decided that he could start going off on me for charging him for shipping for a $25 replacement item. "It's NOT MY FAULT," he started in before I could even say anything. "SIR," I spoke louder than him, and I wasn't playing. "SIR, STOP YELLING. I am going to help you, and I will do my very best to address this situation. I promise that I will." He got very quiet. I wondered if I would get dinged by the company for being stern, and then decided I didn't give a fuck. I calmed my voice. I clarified the details with him. And I decided I didn't want him on my damn line. So I waived the shipping to get rid of him. Jesus. This is what you all think CHRISTMAS is supposed to be about? What a bunch of brainwashed sheep! Still feeling the anger, apparently. What the hell is it ABOUT? I make my way to the FedEx store to pick up my damn phone - after many false turns, because without the GPS that my phone would have, if I had my phone, I am directionless. I called them this morning to ask them to hold it there. It's not there. Of course it's not there. Goddamn Mercury Retrograde. At least, if it IS Mercury Retrograde. Good thing to blame, in any event. As I'm driving home - where the phone has finally, somehow, miraculously and supposedly found its way to my apartment front door - I start counting. I start counting the years. The years that Mom has been gone. It is dawning on me that I miss my mother. A LOT. A lot more than any of the recent DECADES! Well, at least I know what the anger is about. But why THIS year? What's going on? I stop at Frisch's - damned if I'm going to cook for myself when I'm so pissed I'm a danger in my car - to treat myself to a cheap meal. The waitress is super kind to me and brings me extra cucumber slices just because she likes cucumbers a lot and is being a sweet person. She brings me extra tartar sauce too. We decide that Life Is Tartar Sauce. Great minds and all that... It isn't until I get home at 8:15 and realize I've forgotten and therefore missed an important appointment on Skype at 8PM, that I realize something more. It's been 39 years. Thirty. Nine. Years. That's both a lot, and not much, somehow. I don't even know what that means. But I remember when I was 21, and 2 weeks before my Christmas Eve birthday my father calls me at Marlboro College to tell me that Mom died at 5AM that morning. And my life stops. Simply. Stops. I've got no more rudder and no more mooring and no more sail. I don't know who I am, where I am, where I'm going, nor why I should even bother to care. My identity, not yet separate from my mother's, is shattered. As I am, in current 2018 time, thinking about this, for a moment I think, "Oh!!! It's FORTY years! No WONDER I'm upset without even knowing why!" No no. NEXT year will be the year that I look back over that arc - from 61 back to 21 - and vibrationally connect with that young woman. Oh fuckit. All I know is, Mom...I miss you. And apparently you being gone pisses me off. <3 **************** Photo: Jeanne Kirstein and John Cage prepare a piano for his Prepared Piano music. 1960's. ©2018 Lori Kirstein ©2018 Lori Kirstein
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AuthorWorking in Sales at a Call Center for one of the biggest stores in the country should come with hazard pay. Archives
December 2019
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