I’ve been thinking about how I react to unexpected challenges or sudden difficult situations. I think the answer is: not well. At least not at first. I hear a piece of sad news about someone I love, or I make a bad mistake or decision, or I’m done wrong, and my initial reaction is to crumple. I either put up a wall and shut down, or just the opposite: I throw a little fit. Then I typically pull myself together and handle whatever needs to be done.
This happens mostly when I have time to react. In an emergency, I tend to stay calm and in control at first, and only later do I crumple. But in a situation that allows time for reflection, I have to get all squirrely first.
Makes me think of a short scene from my novel Still Life. I wrote this scene quickly, with few revisions, because I must have known what I was writing about.
(Spoiler alert coming).
After Vincent and Jane decide to break up, he drives her to the airport where she will take a flight to visit her parents, and he returns to their empty house:
The house greets me with the deep silence of a still lake. The houseplants have turned against me in my brief absence, their leaves pointing accusingly. I go to toss the car keys on the kitchen counter and miss; they fall to the floor. I look at them for a minute, then lower to one knee, then both knees, then I’m lying on the hardwood floor that I installed, my face next to the fan pushing air from under the refrigerator. I’m gulping and gasping and sobbing like a child lost in the woods, dusk impending, having no idea how I got in this deep or how I’ll ever get out. My chest heaves and I fight for breath. Then I accidentally suck a dust ball into my mouth. It gets caught in my throat and I cough and spit it out, my cheek still resting on the floor. I notice other dust balls huddling in the corners beneath the cabinets, and spots of dried food and grease.
After my little spasm, I feel surprisingly refreshed. I sweep and mop the kitchen floor, then the remainder of the afternoon I dust and vacuum the living room and den, followed by cleaning the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. Some of the tile grout has loosened in the shower stall, so I replace it. I take a trip to the hardware store to buy a roll of window screening because I remember some of the screens have holes and it’s getting to be bug season and Jane gets a terrible reaction to mosquitoes; a single bite leaves a two-inch welt of red swelling.
I charge all the materials to Jane’s account, which she’d opened months ago when I was re-tiling the bathroom.
The cathartic fit, followed by practical action. It happens.
If you haven’t read Still Life yet, now is an excellent time to get your copy and dive in: Click here.
