a prayer for chaos in the new year

bad dreams. changed minds. longing. brokenness. uncomfortable truths. typo'd tattoos I may or may not laser off. all small prices to pay to the party gods.

i don’t know what this is: a memoir

Earlier this week, while at my parents’ house in San Diego, I woke up around 4am panicking, sweaty, smashed against a hot child’s sleeping body (a body that had started on an air mattress at the foot of my bed and migrated) and sat straight up like a character in a movie.

I had dreamed that our beloved Gecko, Sandals was dying of dehydration in said daughters’ bedroom in our house in LA. That she was licking the bottom of her water dish and nothing was there. I deliberated for all of a minute before deciding I could either lie in the darkness worried about her death or NOT lie in the darkness worried about her death so I chose the latter, carefully removing myself from my daughter’s arms before sneaking out the bedroom door, down the stairs in my socks and out the side gate of the house to my parked car, boots in hand.

Then, after stopping for gas and coffee on my way to the 5 North, I drove the two hours to LA.

I got to my house just before sunrise and as I had dreamt, Sandals’ water was empty. She wasn’t dying of dehydration, however. And when I offered her fresh water, she refused to drink it. Crawled back in her cave like no thanks, weirdo, I’m good. I stood there for a minute, trying to decide if there was anything else she might need. Then I got back in my car.

I cried the whole drive back to San Diego although I’m still piecing together the reasons why. I was exhilarated by the drive — that I had done this half-crazy thing while everyone was asleep. That I didn’t even think about it. That this is who I was — who I’ve always been. The kind of girl who gets up in the middle of the night and goes! Except I was a woman now, not a girl. I was a girl for so few years that sometimes I forget who I am and what it’s supposed to look like being her. Once upon a time, in another life, I would get up and go places without telling people. Kind of like this. I could disappear. Become someone else.

It was the first time in recent memory where I felt like I was doing that. This seemingly selfless thing I had just done for my children and their lizard, was perhaps, not selfless at all.

It was for me.

Fuckkkkk, I thought.

The gecko wasn’t thirsty. I was.

Thirsty for what, I don’t know. Liberation. Love. Someone to understand what it’s been like all these years. There are so many things I think I want and then don’t and then do and then don’t and then do.

My kids were still sleeping when I came home. The house was just as I’d left it. I climbed back into bed like nothing had happened and then Fable, who I had texted from the gas station (in case anyone woke up panicked that I was gone) texted me from the next room. She had just woken up. Four hours after I sent my text.

“Small price to pay to the party gods,” we both said, simultaneously, when I explained to her why I went and why I’m glad I did. I was worried and now I’m not, I told her. Which was still also true.

Over the past couple of years, my kids and I have started repeating the same mantra whenever something chaotic happens — something out of our control, or in the case of Sandals the Gecko, something one must sacrifice a few hours to, in order to resolve.

Small price to pay to the party gods.

We say it when something goes missing. Breaks. Is forgotten and left behind. When someone gets a parking ticket. Or a pomegranate stain. It also applies to break-ups, rejections, and, really, anything and everything that sucks.

It’s from that party scene in Clueless. Cher and her friends are in the middle of a making a cameo at the val party when Travis Birkenstock accidentally spills a drink on Cher’s satin shoes. “Ruin my satin shoes why don’t you!” Cher shouts. Later in the movie she will explain that those shoes were so last season what ever made you think about them, but before she gets over it she is PISSED. And Travis? As per usual, he spits straight facts in response.

Travis understood the wear and tear of being alive. He recognized that spills were imminent, that occasionally you have to sacrifice a satin shoe if you want to attend the soiree.

Anyway, that line has become our thing. The newest in a long line of family mantras. And by far, the best of them all.

“One day we’ll all get matching tattoos,” we’ve said over the years.

So.

A few weeks back…

I went and got one.

Fable designed the tattoo in her handwriting, wrote out the text on a piece of paper, which I sent to the artist who then applied it to my arm in purple stamp.

Except…

Somehow?

As my artist — who I have gone to before and adore — was tattooing the words on my arm…

As we were all discussing why these seemingly innocuous words held so much meaning to our family…

She…

Got confused?

Distracted?

Both?

Because.

(Well?)

Whoops.

parby on

She had mistakenly tattooed a b where there should have been be a t. Something I noticed as she was wrapping my wrist in plastic but thought (hoped!) maybe the ink had smeared.

Reader, it did not smear.

It was a mistake, something that even tattoo artists are capable of and while I have many tattoos I MYSELF have goofed (an Anais Nin line I misquoted on accident when I was 19 for example. I even have an edited tattoo on my other forearm) this was new, even for me.

Mistakes reflect the humanity of the artist far more than the art itself. I think about this often —what it would look like if our mistakes were given more grace. Our typos starred instead of scrapped. What it would feel like to write for audiences that weren’t waiting to correct us, or to grow up in homes where we weren’t afraid to speak our truths. Expecting perfection in art and in life is missing the entire point of the thing.

My tattoo artist offered to fix it for me in a few weeks when it was fully healed, which was cool of her. And then a different tattoo artist who is also a friend volunteered to fix it himself, told me he could easily laser off the b and make it a t, which was even cooler.

But the three weeks are almost up now and there’s a part of me that feels like maybe I shouldn’t.

I mean, if I really took the words seriously… it’s a small price to pay, is it not?

Does the typo change its meaning or make it more meaningful?

My son has decided to switch his college major last minute. Apply to completely different schools with completely different programs than originally decided. A future turned on its side and then flipped the other direction.

I had a similar existential crisis around this time at his age when after years of planning for college — of taking AP classes and SAT classes and doing every possible extracurricular/internship/ASB leadership position, I decided in the 11th hour, not to go to college at all.

So I get it. And I’m proud of him. For knowing himself enough to change his mind. It takes self-awareness to do that. And bravery. It also makes things hard and more complicated and rushed against deadlines. And highly stressful during a time of year that is… well… you know.

Small price to pay, though, right? I mean…I sort of just wrote a whole thing about cold feet. May we all feel safe enough to change our minds, even when it feels like it’s too late.

(It isn’t. Ever.)

***

My fourteen year old is having a New Years Eve party right now. I am in my bedroom cross-legged on my bed and on the other side of the door is the same Fiona Apple I listened to at my daughter’s age accompanied by the occasional bloooooop! of a noisemaker, scream, laugh, spill…

I have gone in and out of my room a hundred times tonight because I want to give her and her friends space but not too much space.

This is my dance. With my daughters. And my son. And myself. Knowing when to get involved and when not to. With tattoos that accidentally become meta. And college applications. And party prep. With everything.

Small price to pay to the party gods, I say, watching a paper towel absorb the soda off the hardwood after I get paged to clean up a spill in the living room.

“Rebeccahhhhhh! There was a spill! REBECCA!”

And then I come back to my room, hoping to finish this post before midnight because that was my big plan when I woke up this morning. To write something meaningful on the last day of the year. Which is what I’ve attempted to do between shopping for tonight. Between helping my son with one last college application. And then, wait, do we have enough Martinellis? Gotta go back to the store for more Martinellis.

It’s all so dense right now. Loud. Frenzied. There is no end to this dance party. Even at night, there are dreams of things that must be kept alive.

I used to say things like “this is just what life looks like right now.” But I think this is how life always looks. For me but also for everyone. It’s chaotic and full of discomfort and brokenness some people are just better at at ignoring, or hiding or both.

And there is so much more beauty in all of that than we allow ourselves to feel — always fighting discomfort, trying to make each other happy instead of human. With expectations that are so laughably impossible.

Our love exists not in spite of the spills but because of them. The problem isn’t that everything is hard, it’s that we don’t think it’s supposed to be.

The chaos. The typos. The missteps and mistakes. We can either flavor our life with the mess or push it out of frame. Either way, it’s there. It’s always going to be there. And it’s okay to cry about it. And then to laugh about it. The fact that our heartbreak sticks to the same places our hope does is reason enough to keep going.

One of the last things I read on twitter before deleting the app from my phone (again) was a post by

Maya C. Popa

citing a poem by Anna Akhmatova.

I had just started this post and thought, fuck. The algorithm is really coming for me isn’t she… Because these words — THIS POEM — is exactly what I have held against my chest these last few weeks. Like what if chaos is the point? The permanent typos to remind us of human error. The hundreds of little choices we make every day. To accept and also refuse to accept what could — or could not — happen.

People like to say that the way you spend NYE indicates how you’re going to spend your year and if that’s true, I welcome the chaos of the party. Then again, I think I always have and that’s the reason I’m still up here, flailing. I find peace in the war of it all. Always have. Noise over quiet, amen.

I think of all the scenes in all of the movies where everyone goes from milling about a New Years party to suddenly counting down from ten.

All the almosts and would-haves and attempts-to-let-go-ofs springing forth like fat naked babies through the orifices of final seconds … and then firsts.

I think of all the people trying to get to the ones they love as the clock strikes 12.

That’s how I’m feeling right now, writing this against a turning hour hand, trying to get to you by midnight — or maybe I’m trying to get to me. Sometimes I don’t know the difference. I see myself in everyone these days, their faces reflected back. All of us shoeless and thirsty and covered in storm, reminding each other to dance. We don’t need our shoes on to dance.

***

It’s morning now. It’s New Years Day.

I wanted to finish this post last night but my kids (the ones who weren’t invited to F’s party) and I watched SHE’S THE MAN in my bed instead. We drank Martinellis straight from the bottle and ate Kettle Chips straight from the bag. We went to bed at 2am.

So.

Hi, 2023.

I’m opening the windows to your chaos and poetry. To your pain, disorder and occasional clarity. To your enchantment, fear, humiliation… And everything else that comes with love. Including whatever typos are in this post that I am finishing on four hours of sleep.

In the middle of an all that doesn’t stop.

In a bed full of crumbs.

Small price to pay to the par(b)y gods.