Diamonds in the Roughage

a sort of continuation of this really long post on hope...

After the disaster day I had, certain things came to mind as I lay in bed with Nate trying to quiet the thoughts (and stop thinking about my fruit-punch-fused hair).

Suddenly I remembered moving into the crappiest apartment of all time with Jan, 8 years ago, in an attempt to save on rent. The apartment was in a complex with a dozen or so units, in something akin to a giant house, kitty corner to the Dip n' Sip donuts that served "Sausages Roll" (many of which were consumed after a drunken outing). The floor was vinyl peel-n-stick tile in a nasty brown taupe combo, and if you dropped your water bottle in the bedroom, it would roll to the front door.

We got used to the sloped, sagging floors and bumping our heads on the equally sloped attic ceiling. We dealt with the heat of being in the attic in the summers by purchasing a scary R2D2-looking portable air conditioner. We still had friends that would actually sleep over back then after a bender, even though it was less than half the space of our previous apartment (and about half the rent too). "One day we'll think of this place and laugh," J would say whenever I would get down about how dumpy it was.

But then, there I was, lying in my bed next to my beautiful sleeping son and giggling to myself as I thought about that ridiculous time in our lives. "Wow," I thought, aware of the moment, "That day has come."

Then my mind wandered to a moment at the very tail end of summer, just after my friend Ana's boyfriend passed away. We spent the day at the local beach, picking up beach glass. I wore my wellies hoping to have dry feet, only to have a rare swell wash right into them. I remembered stripping Loogoo down to nothing and her pure joy at being baptized in the lake that gives me a bit of the creeps (no matter how many blue flags they give it). We couldn't keep her out of the water that day if we tried.

Just picturing her joy, that snapshot of time embedded like a YouTube video in my brain, well it made me giggle some more. I thought of all the crap we've been going through since she was born and this image of her at the beach was juxtaposed against it, jarringly. I thought about how J keeps saying something akin to "we are stuck in the shit right now".

And then I thought about corn and how humans don't really digest it. I thought about looking at an August poo (come on now, you all do it) and seeing those perfect flecks of golden maize, wholly untransformed by the eating of them, speckled throughout the most unpleasant thing that we do on a daily basis.

J called from work, just as I was having this profound moment. I told him I'd had a realization about our life. "Right now we are mired in shit. Except there are these pretty little corn diamonds in there too."

"That's funny," he replied.

And you know what? It totally is.

I found hope in that. And I hope there's a nugget of gold (pardon the pun) somewhere in there that gives you hope too.