Skip to main content

Purple Crayon

I have known my neighbor Lindsay for over a year now and have known her to being prone to mood swings. She can go from being kind, polite and thoughtful to abrasive and outright rude. Since the only reason we know each other is that our kids are in the same grade and play together, I've always ignored her behavior - that way the kids don't have to be caught in the friction between two adults that has nothing to do with them. I am sure I have my bad days too - I must have looked through her, been cold and aloof because I had things on my mind. There is always a great excuse for less than perfect behavior. But what happened today was interesting enough to provoke this post.

My level of retardation when it comes to cars is quite unparalleled and I am deeply ashamed of myself. I had a very dumb question about mine that I thought Lindsay's boyfriend Jared could easily answer and set my mind to rest. He has this really beat up car that he loves tinkering with. Since I don't know how stuff works, I can work myself to some high levels of anxiety over imaginary things. I've gone into the dealership in the past and come out looking like a prize idiot. I decide I'll save myself the trouble and embarrasment. So I walk over, knock on her door. Jared answers. Lindsay is in the kitchen washing up after dinner.

I apologize for showing up suddenly like that. I explain to them the problem at hand. Jared nods sagely. Lindsay is smoldering with rage. She tells me that I have to figure things out myself and go to a service station if I need help. She keeps repeating " You can do this yourself. You don't need help". This is the same woman who has showed up at my door with medicines and Kool-Aid for J just hearing that she had fever, invited her over to impromptu fondu parties, fed her lunch and dinner more times than I can count.


Her body language and words form a heady cocktail of anger, mockery and indignation. I am not sure what is causing such a strong reaction. I am ready to leave concerned about how far south things will head. Just then, Jared volunteers to walk up to my car and take a look. I can tell she is infuriated but she does not say anything as we walk out the door. Jared tells me all is well with my car and explains his reasoning patiently. It makes perfect sense. I am glad he took the time to help me and I thank him.

Back home, I wonder about Lindsay - was it PMS, an argument with Jared, a horrible day at work, the kids driving her batty or some combination thereof. It could very well be but there was a strong subtext to all that as well - something impossible to miss. She was telling me that I had no right to a free ride. I couldn't just walk in the door and borrow a man when I needed help without putting forth the effort to form and be in a relationship of my own.

She had earned that right and it came at a large cost - both material and emotional. They have been together for a long time now and Lindsay knows a life together may never become possible. He is too comfortable to have the comfort of a home and a wife without any of the responsibility. She is willing to go along with this arrangement because her need for intimacy and companionship is so overwhelming. She was telling me to go get my own and not borrow - not unlike our kids telling each other "This is my purple crayon. You need to get your own".

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques