what is easy

it’s wednesday and I’m trying to think of what is easy. a post it on my desk reading, “If I’m not good, what am I?” i don’t know how to answer that question. nothing about you is one dimensional. notes from therapy. my mother couldn’t fly home for her father’s funeral because she was too pregnant with me and now i hold all her feelings and she has very little in her arsenal. there is very little sad or happy, just functional. different degrees of surviving, 50 shades of ok because anything but middle ground is too much.

ever since the heart attack my dad can no longer poop in peace. he passed out in the downstairs bathroom so every time that door is shut, she knock on it, asking “you ok?” whether he’s the one in there or not. the same bathroom i ate thanksgiving dinner in the year auntie told me i had gained weight. the same bathroom i henna’d joey conroy’s hair red senior year of high school, staining the bath mat a rusty brown orange, the color of old dried blood. the same bathroom crowded with a magazine rack with readers digests from the 80s.

she knocks on the door while i’m in there. “you ok?” she asks. “i’m fine. it’s me.” I say. she doesn’t reply but i feel the confusion in her pause. “it’s jen. dad’s in his chair.” then the shuffling of her house slippers on the time as she putters away to the kitchen.