when this isn’t a bad dream. when you can’t wake up to the sun shining through your windows.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as ballads, Christian, divorce, divorce papers, Dover, drew, entire world, friend, God, Jessica, Maria, mutual friend, Newark, piece of bread, someone, thing, truth
I know this is ugly, but can I just say that driving around with divorce papers sitting in the seat right next to me–the seat that should be filled with my loved one, making the contrast that much more startling–is just unbelievable?
It’s enough to make me curse.
The other day I had a friend over. He wanted to look at some papers on my desk but these weren’t just any papers: they were the papers I was using to meticulously hide my divorce papers. And so when he nonchalantly reached to grab them, I jumped.
I jumped like I was a starving child and he was trying to take my last piece of bread. It was weird and out of character and he looked at me like it was weird and out of character, but neither of us said a word.
The truth is I was embarrassed.
I didn’t want him to see what I was hiding, but an even greater truth is that the entire world is going to be seeing what I’ve been hiding.
Because it’s real.
I sang at a funeral a few weeks ago and ran into someone I haven’t seen in a few years. The conversation was casual and eventually got to Drew as she asked me how he’s doing. Trying to give nothing away, I apparently failed miserably because right after I said, He’s…okay…with no fewer or no more words than just those two, she abruptly asked, Are you guys still together?
And it took my breath away. But not in the way that most ballads mean, not even close.
Nor did I know how to recover.
So I said the party line that has since become old. We’re going through a hard time. He’s made bad choices and we’re separated.
And then she said that was too bad. She said it like I told her my old Aunt who last I checked was 108 had just died peacefully in her sleep. She said it with distant compassion.Then she mentioned someone else we both knew, a mutual friend, who had just gotten a divorce too.
She said too and the importance of that word was not lost on me.
I hadn’t even mentioned divorce and now a friend of ours had just gotten one too.
I wasn’t ready for that conversation. And I sure as heck wasn’t ready for commentary on the fact that I was a gaping wound who had managed to put on a dress and sing Ave Maria that morning. I wasn’t ready to tell people that I was bleeding from the jugular and then be offered a band-aid and a pat on the back.
You better believe that my response to the question, How’s Drew? got a lot better when I was asked the same thing at the reception for the funeral. I actually may have overcompensated, to be honest, because as soon as I heard the words I answered loudly. Cheerfully. Like there’s nothing I’d rather be talking about then how Drew is doing.
Oh, he’s great!!!!! I said.
But then when this woman asked me where he’s working, my oscar winning performance lost the oscar. I couldn’t for the life of me remember where he was working. Not even the city he worked in.
As I was deliberating, taking too much time to answer such a normal question, my friend Christian jumped in like a champ.
He’s doing the sleep tech thing in Dover, he said with a smile.
Yes! I said. In Dover! He’s working in Dover!!!! And I am pretty sure I sounded like I was one stop from the loony bin.
Well, maybe I am, actually.
The thing is, I just don’t always know quite what to say. The truth is a start, but how much of the truth? And do I really want to get into it? All the time and everywhere?
No, I don’t.
Not at the gym. Not when someone I haven’t seen for years asks me how Drew’s doing, if we’re still in Newark. I’m on the bike and the last thing I want to be doing is communicating that I am going through a divorce, that what seemed like one of the couples who would definitely make it is now definitely not making it. That I am a cliche just like all the others. That I might as well have had a reality show called The Newlyweds and then made a country album that flopped. And the fact that my name is also Jessica? Well, perfect.
So I don’t tell him. And I don’t know, maybe that is wrong, but I don’t know how to do this at all, least of all perfectly.
And while the man at the bank today was fumbling through my divorce papers, trying to figure them out and then notarize them, he apologetically explained, I’ve never been married .
To which I said, Well, I’ve never been divorced.
Which is the truth.
And I have no idea whatsoever what I am doing.
And it sucks to be attaching stupid papers to your heartache; as if the facts of our marriage, the details of our intertwined lives could ever encompass who we’ve been and who we are now. And how trite that this thing that is negating us could give me a paper cut.
But God, this is real, and I will feel my way through the dark until somebody turns on the light.
I just hope that happens soon.
in song
in Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
as ave maria, Christian, first verse, God, Joe, Maria, night, open mic night, organist, rehearse, song, time, words in my mouth, world
It’s amazing how the act of singing can take you to such polar opposites.
Last night I performed at the World Cafe Live open mic night in Philly. I got home late, slept for about three hours, and then woke up in order to wash my hair and put on something presentable in order to get to a Catholic church in time to rehearse and then sing for a funeral.
Oh, did I say rehearse?
Silly me, that is a mistake.
Because, see, I didn’t.
Get to rehearse, I mean.
Well, that’s not altogether true either. I did get to rehearse the song I was singing while my friend Christian accompanied me on the guitar. The song that I’ve sung a thousand times and was not nervous about at all. That was the song I did get to rehearse.
But the other one. The tricksy one. The beautiful hymn for which I had never received the complete sheet music and remember? had never rehearsed. That was the one I was really counting on practicing with the organist and I don’t know, at the very least hearing the introduction and the interlude.
But no dice.
Joe, the organist, heard me sing a few notes quietly and decided we didn’t need to practice. You’ve got this one, he said. I feel total confidence in you, he let me know with a thumbs up.
As if the thumbs up made up for the lack of practice. Well not just the thumbs up. He kissed me too, which might have helped, but not with Ave Maria.
And even when I asked if we could go over it once he looked absolutely befuddled at the very notion of practicing something which clearly needed no practice.
Gulp.
And that was that.
Except it wasn’t.
I walked up to sing Ave Maria and knew that I was standing there on a hope and a prayer. I opened my mouth and I sang it but let me tell you, it was one of those times when you finish the first verse and cannot believe God would be so merciless as to have allowed Shubert to write a whole other one.
Usually when I sing songs I am happy in every section of it, relishing the song, savoring the words in my mouth like they taste good. But this time I was a little scared and I don’t like that. And Joe was wanting me to lead and there I was wanting Joe to lead and so there we both were doing a very tentative kind of limp together that eventually got to where we were going.
But it sure did feel like it was taking it’s sweet old time.
Oh, and I do love that song. It’s beautiful and you can’t tell me it’s not. The melody is sinuous and I can see it moving to the pattern of the lace on a victorian valentine’s day card. Round and soft, ephemeral and strong. Not thick, but definitely lasting. And I also have to admit that I do love singing in a Catholic church. The way the notes ring without hardly any effort at all makes me wish all over again that I had gotten to practice Ave Maria so that I could have made them ring even more.
But there you go, it was not what I would call my favorite moment, but it happened. And I know the family friend who asked me to sing for his father’s funeral was very happy, so I am grateful to have done it. Maybe I should say touched instead; happy isn’t really the word when involving a funeral, I think.
But the World Cafe the night before, the other singing I did within the past 24 hours.
That was a blast. Just nothing else but a really good time. My sister and I went last minute, got there later than intended, and so I missed even making it onto the sign-up sheet and had to put my name on the loser alternate list. But we were highly entertained listening to some of Philly’s finest woo the packed club and even got to eat the world’s worst cheese plate while doing it.
And what do you know, but I did get to sing. I was the very last of the night, could only do one song (as opposed to two, since I was on the loser alternate list), and in an effort to speed things up for the understandably tired crowd, the MC made me sit at the piano bench on stage while the previous few acts were performing.
Awesome.
I was just sitting there, for no apparent reason, while not performing. See, I am not the kind of person that likes to be in the spotlight for no good reason. I’d much rather read a book or catch a frog. Or even read a book about catching frogs. But because the MC did not want to have to wait the .10 seconds it would take me to walk from my chair to the piano when it was my turn to play, I had to wait on stage, poised and ready, with nothing to do.
It was actually pretty funny.
And a very nice guy ended up sitting with me on the piano bench, keeping me company and making me feel less of an idiot, so I took comfort in that.
And then I performed and it was my own song so I totally knew it and could make the intro and interludes as long or as short as I wanted and there was also comfort in that.
And I loved it.
The funeral was sadly beautiful, haunting and light; the World Cafe was jaunty and shadowed, crowded with music that came directly from anonymous living rooms.
I am grateful to have been at both places, grateful to have come by them by a song.
