Flaw Salad

My grandmother maintained an expansive and impressive flower garden. I remember walking its grounds as a child, when they felt endless and fantastical. Through towering pines, friendly hydrangeas, bright tulips and marigolds and snapdragons and daisies, fragrant lilacs and roses, and elegant hostas, we wandered. We felt surrounded, liable to get lost somewhere in the single-acre wood. Mossy bird baths gave the place an ethereal quality. I felt like a character in a storybook, like at any moment I might walk through a cupboard and into a magical world of impossible color. I wonder now, long after the house has been sold, after my grandmother has passed, what animated the woman who tended this sacred space. I’ve inherited a treasure trove of her clothing and jewelry, and I’ve come to regard her taste as impeccable—its rare deviations likely gifts or souvenirs, and besides, everyone buys the odd mistake from time to time. I’ve spent hours sorting through her belongings, which is an intimate way to learn a person. I think it’s a shame we only do it posthumously. Maybe that kind of privacy invasion would make us too naked to withstand. I’m reminded of my unhoused neighbors, of immigrants, of evictions, of prisons, of digital corporate eyes. Could sifting through Grandma’s wardrobe help me understand her a fraction as well as Meta understands me? Unlikely. Meta knew my gender before I did, and I joked about it for years before admitting they were right. 

It was my new haircut that got me thinking about Grandma in the first place. I’ve acquired a dirtbag mullet. Before going outside just now, I fretted around the house, an anxious mix of excitement and uncertainty. Was this piece of hair lying just right? How about now? Should I wear makeup? Is eyeliner a good look with a mullet? Should I cut the sleeves off this shirt? Do these socks work? Do I look okay? Do I look as cool as I feel? Do you like these aviators? My partner managed not to mock me or, frankly, strangle me. She has compassion for gender adolescence, the peculiar feeling of being an adult still learning your place in social dynamics, exploring the limits of your power and community. I am seeking those who understand. I am leaving behind those who don’t. I am presenting a harsher exterior. I do not wish to be confused with the enemy, with its clean cuts and shining facades. I am developing a fondness for grit. Still, bourgeois tastes infect my aesthetic preferences. Worse, bourgeois values infect my behaviors and attractions. I fantasize in soft pink. 

A dark current runs through me, and I wonder if this same current ran through my grandmother. Was she imprisoned by Catholicism and six children and a husband executive at IBM? Did her sliver of the world stifle the wildness one can sense in the deeper flavors of her gardens and garments? Is that why she became mean and small at the end, her form collapsing itself into the manifestation of her cruelest impulses, which I understood from reports to be the last ones left? Perhaps she crushed her own hope, her own compassion, her own spirit, with the untenable weight of her repressed self. She was a mother and wife. She was also one of the first policewomen in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She was a trailblazer with a queer aesthetic, and she gave her life to three daughters, three sons, one husband, countless flowers, and a smattering of corgis. Was it enough for her? What have I given my life to? Will it be enough for me? I feel a strong pull to do more. What is it, the contribution that will teach me the lesson I fear she never learned? How do I grow kinder with each passing year? How do I retire the armor? 

I don her wares as both an homage and a reminder: Do not go that way.

I hope not to live my life such that I am regarded as a cautionary tale. I hope to be, rather, an inspiration. I hope to find a way of living that models possibility for others. I hope to shine light. I fear succumbing to the darkness. Will the women in my family shrink to shriveled stumps? Will a frown scream down my face for decades and pull my jowls toward the floor? Is my face kind? Am I kind? I have a savage streak. Feeling cornered, whether the threat is real or perceived, frightening tones overtake my speech. Is that too passive? I speak like a demon. Too removed? I am a demon. A monster. 

My therapist would take umbrage with that phrasing. What are we, I ask her, if not a collection of our behaviors? I am an asshole. I’m trying to convince her during a pivotal session: the one where she finally meets my activated self, the unwell one who plays out my worst moments, the one who, until now, has been but a concept to her, an idea, a character—not the crazed face arguing back to her that indeed an asshole is one who does asshole things and therefore I am an asshole. No possibility, then, for redemption? she asks. Are we defined by our worst acts? She tries to catch me in a logical fallacy, but there is no fallacy. My asshole behaviors are not in the past. They’re in my home, in the barbs I sling thoughtlessly or cruelly, the middle fingers waving in traffic because I grew impatient, once again, with some action I have deemed incorrect and therefore “punished,” or simply because I once again needed to “win.” An asshole, you see. My good therapist keeps her cool, though visibly fazed by the new person in session. I eventually recover, back to the regular self, the passably sane self, but I think my grandmother became her own Hyde full-time. 

Underneath the nervous appearance questions I fling at my partner lies a much larger one: Am I doing okay? I was sharp again last night. I fear I am not doing enough to stave off the demon. Living honestly, I tell myself, is at least a step off Grandma’s path. Last night was a setback, but her fate is not yet mine.

Maybe this is too much to share with an audience of several possibly-human subscribers, the occasional ex, and random social media onlookers. Maybe a grandmother is best remembered for her goofy greeting cards full of stickers, reliable at every holiday until the bitter end. Maybe I should recall her beautiful Christmas trees and fondness for gin and tonics. Maybe I should paint a picture of her whiling away summers in the adirondack chairs overlooking the lake at the cabin. Maybe I should mention her skill in cards, especially at Hearts, where she often shot the moon. I loved my grandmother, as much as one can love a person so reserved. I guess I hope that when I die there is no such qualifier.

My partner just handed me a bowl of mac-n-cheese.