Morning Reflection: July 19

When did I realize my parents weren’t perfect?
A pile of crumbs manifested on my kitchen table. Every morning, as I pour steaming coffee into my chipped coffee cup, I notice the pile’s mysterious growth. It must be drinking enough milk at the rate its been increasing in size.
I make my way towards the living room, or what I call the living room but considering the size of my apartment located in the heart of the Village it’s difficult to tell where the kitchen ends and the living room begins and whether my roomate is speaking to me or if it’s our neighbors fighting through the walls. My sock is drenched from a puddle that has formed below the refrigerator. A puddle that has been plucked from the curbside on 14th Street and relocated to my home. I consider myself a good host, but puddles that interrupt my morning routine are not welcome here.
My soggy sock and I plop onto the couch waiting for the caffeine to charge me. I’m currently at 14%, but I require at least 75% in order to make it through the day.
Click. Click. Click, click, click.
The remote batteries fizzled out some time last week. Although, I still make an attempt once in a while, hoping that the television is simply in need of some motivation like the rest of us.
Get new batteries, I make a mental note and then file it in the same compartment of my mind along with the schedule a doctor’s appointment note I made weeks, maybe months, ago.
At mom’s house, there were no soggy socks. And there were no crumb monsters greeting me in the morning. At mom’s house I got to start my day with re-runs of Friends or classic cartoons. At mom’s house there were magical fairies who snuck around in the night fixing, and cleaning, and fashioning a home.
Fairies named Joanne, and Jo, and ma, and momma, and mom.
I spent 18 years of my life insisting my parents weren’t perfect. 16 years of harboring resentment towards them for not truly being in love, followed by 2 years of boiling anger after they followed through with a divorce.
I spent mornings with a tight jaw when my mom would be asleep while I made my own instant oatmeal before school. And I spent nights feeling vexation steep in every ounce of my being like a poisonous tea bag while I ate dinner in my bedroom, my sister eating in the living room and the rest of the family eating independantly, scattered throughout the house.
It wasn’t until I moved into my own apartment in New York City shortly after my 19th birthday that I realized I had spent so much time picking my family apart piece by piece until every flaw was exposed, raw and irritated like a scab peeled off too soon. Truthfully, there were bits and pieces of perfection all around me, scattered throughout the home, like our family dinners, residing within each and every person that helped build it.

