don't blame me

Tonight Beatrice and I finished, for the third time, Ramona's World. For those of you who haven't read it recently, it ends with Ramona's archenemy, snooty Susan, breaking down in tears at Ramona's birthday party. She initially refuses a piece of birthday cake because her mother told her about the germs that rain down on cakes when someone blows out her candles, and because of the cavities, and of course because of the sugar. But it creates such a stir amongst the other girls at the picnic table at the park that she can no longer maintain her superior manner and loses it under the sheer pressure of having to be perfect all the time. She's mad that Ramona is blatantly imperfect and people like her. She's mad that she tries so hard to be perfect and things still don't work out in her favor.

Poor Susan, said Bea. I'm glad she got better about being perfect in the end (in this case getting better = deciding it was okay to eat a piece of germy cake).

Do you ever want to be perfect?

Not about being good, like Susan. But I do want to be perfect with my work at school.

What happens when you aren't?

Bea was looking at me upside down, settling the top of her head and her feet on my bed with her butt in the air, one arm extended to pet the cat next to me, one arm gesturing wildly as if it belonged to another expressive person who was deep in an unrelated conversation.

I get so mad at myself.

Yes. That must be hard.

Because I know it's hard for me. I know how the homework anguish tests my waning evening patience, the meltdowns over mistakes that lead to sobbing at the kitchen table, the anxiety over timed math facts worksheets. It's agony for all of us, and the familiarity of it all (my own tantrums come to mind) doesn't help me parent with wisdom and grace. It just makes me more short-tempered.

Earlier tonight she and I were sitting in our minivan, waiting outside the high school for Frances. Our minivan is pretty old. Old and crusty. And sticky. And trashy, good lord. But anyway. Because it is so old there isn't a good way to play music from my phone through the speakers, so we are mostly limited to the piles of CDs tucked in compartments and under seats, relics from the CDs-in-cars era. It means certain treasures of my past get cycled through and my favorite of them all, I do believe, is Cat Power's You Are Free album from 2003.

Actually, not the album. Mostly the first song. I Don't Blame You. 

I could listen to it a thousand times. In fact I probably have listened to it a thousand times and I'm not sick of it yet. Mike found it mildly irritating and somewhat amusing when I would hit rewind to hear a song once or twice or three times in a row; he would roll his eyes. He prefered to experience the album as a whole. It was another time then.

The song is, possibly, a letter to Kurt Cobain. It's addressed to a musician who is trapped in other people's sense of ownership of him, their expectations and projections. I might be totally wrong but I think the act for which she doesn't blame him is his suicide. None of this particularly connects to me; what I respond to is the spare chords, the tenderness and ache in her voice. I don't blame you. It's a song that captures what it's like to love someone who is in pain.

It was echoing in my mind, pacing my steps through the damp gray February air as I walked to work this morning. I don't blame you. What can it mean? Blame suggests a false loading of responsibility onto one lone set of shoulders, when we all know it's never that simple. There are always already others involved, and history and hurt and endless perspectives. You can take responsibility for a mistake without taking the blame. The blame is more than your fair share. The blame can never be true.

What would it be like to sing this song to myself? To see the pain I am in and love me with a gentleness that doesn't judge? I tried to incline the tenderness of the song playing in my mind in my own direction. It wasn't easy; I'm not sure I can really do it. But the very idea, the very effort, lent a sense of possibility and exhilarating mystery to those last moments in the damp chill before I arrived at my office. My heart was lighter.

I don't blame you. I don't blame you for how much or how little you cry. For saying the wrong thing. For saying too much. For sweating when you're nervous, and for the myriad everyday things that make you nervous. For hurting a friend's feelings. For your enormous feet. For what you did and didn't do for Mike all the days he was sick. For the pain your children feel. For being irritable. For having shadows beneath your eyes. For your enormous smile. For picking at your cuticles. For seeking distraction in places you know cannot truly comfort. For being imperfect, so deeply and obviously and glaringly imperfect, every fucking day.

To sing to myself with a heart full of love, to remind myself there is nothing here to be ashamed of. It's a radical, disorienting serenade.

Every day is full of our shortcomings if we look for them, but that doesn't mean we are to blame. We make mistakes that do not diminish our preciousness; rather they put our preciousness into sharper relief. How I long for Mike's skinny calves and bouts of anxiety and tear-filled eyes and hairy toes.

I took that picture at the top of this post in the bathroom at work yesterday to try and convince my sister to buy the pants I'm wearing because she discovered the very same ones were on sale but was on the fence and wanted to see how they looked on me first. It's the kind of picture I can only send to my sister. I felt silly, but not embarrassed, because she loves me no matter what. Now I'm sending it to you, too. I'm practicing behaving as if I don't blame me. Maybe it will overflow and seep into Beatrice's growing heart when neither of us is paying attention, and she won't blame herself either.

It's just a picture. I'm just a person.

Hello.