How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
On the perpetual frustration of "taking it all in"
Shortly before my wedding, nearly twenty-two years ago, an older woman—some friend of my parents, I think, most likely named Nancy or Linda or Sandy; possibly Carol—told me that as I was walking down the aisle, I should look at the faces of everyone assembled there, all my friends and family, as a way to really take it all in.
I figured it was worth a shot. So as I proceeded down the aisle with my parents I looked around, gazing at the faces in the crowd, making some brief eye contact here and there. Yep, there was my great aunt. There were my college friends. There was a pal from work and his batshit crazy girlfriend. There was another friend of my parents named Nancy or Linda or Sandy, and her husband Bob or Jim or whatever. Yep, yep, yep.
But the feeling I had as I was doing all this looking around wasn’t a feeling of “successfully taking it all in.” It was a feeling of “I must look like some kind of possessed demon bride, this is realy weird, why am I doing this.”
All day, I kept trying to take it all in. I’d been looking forward to my wedding for more than a year, planning and prepping and anticipating. It was a major event! A (probably) once in a lifetime thing! I wanted to really feel it!
But despite my best efforts and most concerted, crazy-eyed staring, I experienced it in more or less the same way I did any pleasant event.
Don’t get me wrong: I felt joyful and grateful and happy. I had a blast. It was a special day, and it felt special to be sure, what with all the music and people and flowers and finery.
But all the in-taking didn’t result in any sort of deep-in-the-gut satisfaction. There was no punctuation, no climax, no release. (Insert wedding night joke here, if you must.) No matter how hungrily I gulped it all down, I didn’t feel full. Except of cake. And champagne.
It’s been like this my whole life when it comes to big days and big events. When I’m looking forward to them, they’re like gorgeous, towering cumulus clouds up there in the blue. I can’t wait to bite them or bounce on them or just roll around in them, listening to the choirs of angels or music of the spheres or what have you.
But then, finally, I get to them and….oh. They’re made of vapor.
Nice vapor! Interesting vapor! But you can’t scoop it up or swallow it or fall back into it and sleep the best sleep of your life. You can do your damnedest to take it all in, but it won’t fill you up. So you just hang around inside the cloud for a while, feeling pleasantly damp, thinking “hey, cool, I’m in a cloud,” until it’s time to go.
And then, wouldn’t you know it? When you look at the cloud in the rearview mirror (because now we’re in a car in this scenario, apparently), it’s back to its gorgeous, solid, billowing brilliance.
What does hit hard and physical and solid as hell in the moment? Grief. Loss. Fear. You don’t have to take them in to feel them—they take you.
When I’ve had my heart broken, when Clio was diagnosed with cancer, when my father was on the brink of death—I felt all these things deeply and viscerally, in my stomach, my limbs, my heart, my mouth. The sorrow of what was happening made reality feel so crushingly hyper-real that all I wanted was out.
How is this fair? Why can’t the good stuff affect us in the moment just as hard as the bad does? (Evolutionary blah blah blah fight or flight, etc. I know.)
I’m happy to say that I’m not dealing with pain or grief right now. But I have been experiencing the cumulus cloud phenomenon as I launch The Society of Shame into the world. Just as I knew I would.
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of interviews and events and travel and celebration and attempting to drink from impossible-to-drink-from swan-shaped wine glasses:
I’ve been on trains, planes and automobiles. I’ve gotten to see and/or stay with friends and family I haven’t seen in months, years, even decades. I’ve been overwhelmed by the love and support and enthusiasm people have shown. I’ve had champagne! And cake! Wait, no; cupcakes. And cookies. Good enough.
Some really exciting things have happened along the way, too, like having the book picked for Zibby’s Book Club for August, and named a People magazine book of the week. There’s some other good stuff on the horizon too, knock on wood.
Honestly, the whole thing is one big freaking dream come true, and I couldn’t be happier.
Correction: I couldn’t be happier UNLESS there was some way to feel it all in the moment(s) with the same intensity as I felt the anticipation—and with which I will, no doubt, feel the recollection. I want to not only suck the marrow out of it, Thoreau style, as I’m doing, but to have it actually fill me to bursting.
But vapor doesn’t do that.
Still. I keep trying.
So, look, if you come to one of my events in the next few weeks or months (which I hope you will), and I am scanning the faces in the crowd, smiling like a creepy, possessed doll, possibly making brief, unnecessary eye contact with you…well, now you know why.
And I apologize.
On the other hand, when I look back on my life, what comes up are standout events, BOTH sad and (mostly) happy. That tends to be how I remember life. I can remember well the day on which my father died - I was there, 35 years ago. But I remember even better my wedding day, not a lot of detail, but the sense of a joyous occasion, and that was 55 years ago.
Of course Midwest airports didn’t have your book, since our gas stations only have power drinks instead of sparkling water. (Is that a metaphor?)
Soooo glad Iowa City was a stop on your worldwide tour!