Cuh-low-sure
Dec. 11th, 2008 | 08:45 pm
With Festivus rapidly approaching on the 23rd, I have been working on my annual Airing of Grievances.
I'm sure if I thought about it, I'd have plenty of grievances with other people and the world at large, but I'm going to confine this list to grievances I have with myself. That list could be miles long. Just ask my friends who call me and leave nice messages and I never call them back. (Sorry! I'm just not a caller. I wish I was.) Or ask whomever parks next to me in parking lots, because I'm always hanging out all over the lines. (Sorry! I have issues with depth perception.) Or ask my co-workers who were so eager to have a Secret Santa gift exchange
at the Christmas party this year. (Sorry! I voted against it because it's lame and awkward and I don't know any of you and I don't know what you want and why don't we just take the afternoon off?) Or ask the planet. (Sorry! I don't recycle ever since I learned that it leaves an even larger carbon footprint and I don't compost because it smells like I'm storing corpses.)
So I will focus on The One thing about myself that I can't stand the most. The deepest personal grievance I have: My own Anger.
I have Anger like other people have children. It's been gestating inside of me for a couple of years now, and I've finally decided to talk about it, to birth it, and then stomp it out on the terrazzo like a bloody demon baby. Better yet, I'll just cut the cord and put it in a jar of formaldehyde and store it on a dusty shelf near the back in the Life Lessons Learned Lab.
It's not just a random Anger. My Anger is concentrated on the way I behaved in one long-distance relationship in particular. Just for the purposes of this Grievance airing, let's call him Peter Pan, a man-boy for whom cheating and lies and addictions are de rigueur. It's my fault that I believed Peter and stuck by him and loved him for so long. I should have found these transgressions immediately unacceptable. But, worse than the three years of my life and the thousands of dollars in plane tickets to see him and the liters of tears is the self-doubt I fostered, in place of my self-respect. Still worse, is the fact that I missed my grandmother's funeral. In fact, this is the egg of my Anger baby: I missed saying goodbye to my Babci.*
Two years ago, Peter and I decided to meet for a romantic weekend in Paris for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. When I think back, though, it was less of a mutual decision to meet there, and more of a me desperately missing him and wanting to see him and him agreeing only if he could coordinate it with a wine tour. I had been sick a lot that fall with an unexplained digestive ailment: I felt nauseous all the time. One intuitive GI doctor told me that it might be stress related, or somehow related to my difficult long-distance relationship.
I flew all night from Los Angeles, on that lousy fourteen-hour Air France cattle haul and arrived at CDG Thanksgiving morning. Peter's flight was only an hour for him. A car picked us up and took us to Reims in the Champagne region for a little tour especially arranged for us. I was horribly plane sick and then car sick. A freezing rain was falling. I just wanted to lay down, but I put on a brave face and sipped champagne at a couple of different champagne houses and nibbled on pigeon for Thanksgiving dinner, surprisingly not a huge French holiday. At 3 a.m., I was jolted awake with a very unsettling feeling, so I drew a scalding hot bath and sat in it, simmering and calming myself and reading a book until sunrise.
That noon, Peter and I were to visit one of the largest Champagne houses, Veuve Clicquot, for a tour and a five star midday meal. I could barely walk from the hotel room to the cab waiting outside the lobby. Between the jet lag and the ever-present nausea and a champagne headache and just a feeling that something was terribly wrong, the last thing I wanted to do was get in the back of a cab. But I did, and I ended up remembering the words for "stop the car, please" in French rather quickly when 1 km into the trip, I had to get out and vomit by the
side of the road. Peter watched from inside the cab and I could tell I embarrassed him.
We arrived at Clicquot and Peter asked the hostess if there was a place for me to just sit down while he went on the tour. The hostess made a phone call and next thing I knew, I was being shuttled away (by cab again) to the Clicquot Castle, where they gave me a room for the day in which to rest. I'm not sure if it was actually called the Clicquot Castle, but it was a huge estate owned by Clicquot and inside it felt like a palace, with miles of marble and those tiny high door knobs and wainscotting everywhere. I slept fitfully in a featherbed for a couple of hours
and woke up to my phone ringing. I thought it would be Peter, checking on me.
It was my sister calling from Florida.
Our Babci died last night at about 9:00 p.m., New York time.
That would have been exactly when I was jolted awake. My mom and dad were on their way up north. The funeral would be Monday. I hung up with her and started calling Delta. Did you know that there are no such things as Bereavement Fares? Even if you're a Platinum Medallion. It would be about $4,000 for a last minute Paris to New York then eventually back to LA flight. It would be that much, IF there were any flights available. There weren't any. Holiday weekend, ma'am, I was told. Everything was overbooked. No flights. Nothing.
The cab took me back to Clicquot. I wept the whole way. I got out and met Peter in the lobby.
"My grandmother died," was all I said as a greeting.
"Oh, I'm sorry, but you knew that was coming. She was how old? 90?," Then he paused, "You're not going to believe the day I had. I just ate the finest meal of my entire life."
I sat in silence during the cab drive back to Paris, watching the rain on the car window and trying not to be car sick. Peter prattled on and on about white truffles and pate and vintage champagne. When I stopped pretending to pay attention, he started sending text messages to other people instead.
My Babci was and always will be one of my favorite people ever and all I could do was email words to her funeral. My sister would read them during the service and send my regards. But I would be missing. Her first granddaughter. I was disgusted with myself that I had chosen to take the trip with someone who really didn't seem too bothered with the fact that I was sick or that I had just lost someone very close to me. I was with someone who cared very little for me, and missing a farewell for someone who would have done anything for me, and frequently did. I'm actually relieved I didn't know then what I know now... about how many other women considered themselves Peter's girlfriend at the time and how much of his life was a lie.
I wrote what I wanted to say whilst sitting in a drafty boutique hotel room in Paris while he napped the next day. This is what I wrote:
My grandmother had many names.
To most, she was Jean Bielecki, but if you asked her name, she would take a deep breath and reply in a very serious tone:
"Well… I don't. Know."
And she really didn't. She would continue:
"My mother named me Janyinna, Polish for Genevieve. However, the problem was that my sister was also called Janyinna. Some people called me Jenny when I was growing up to avoid confusion. The nuns at school changed my name to Jean. But later when I worked for a chemist, I was known as Jenny Griffin. At some point, I was also called Johanna."
This story changed a bit every time she told it, but it was always equally intriguing and puzzling.
You may have known her as Jean, or as Mrs. Bielecki, or as Chuchee (Auntie) Jean, or as Mom, or as many of us knew her, affectionately, Babci.
But she had many other names:
- Franciscan
- Matriarch
- Social Worker
- Business Woman
- World Traveler
- Generous Benefactor
- Philanthropist
Perhaps what she can be called, above all, more than even mother or grandmother, is "friend". Because a friend cares about what happens to you, A friend prays for you. And more than anyone else I'll ever know and you'll ever know, Babci prayed for you.
I know that since I was born, Babci has prayed for me. She prayed for me to feel better when I was sick, to do well in school, to find a job, to find a worthy husband, to have a baby, and for the past few years, just simply to find happiness.
The thing is, I know I'm not special. Babci prayed for every one of you in every way, too. I know, because on my last visit with her this past summer , I helped her write out her prayer lists. The lists were long—after 94 years, there were a lot of people counting on her.
Babci bestowed many gifts to me, my parents, my sisters and brother over the years, but the best gift she ever gave to me was her constant support through her prayers. I always knew there was someone on my side, sending me good thoughts, and lighting a candle for me.
I'm so sorry I'm not there today. I would like for all of us to to give to Babci one gift that I know she would love. I would like everyone to take a moment of silence right now, to thank Jean, Mrs.Bielecki, Mom, Babci, or however you knew her, for all of her prayers, because I know she's in heaven right now, still praying for all of us.
*
I understand the true meaning of Festivus and the official Airing of Grievances now. After getting this down with words rather than keeping it alive with emotions in my head, heart, and belly, Peter and Paris don't really matter. The Anger baby is birthed. I don't have it anymore. And now, I can finally, personally and publicly, tell my Babci goodbye.
Here's to always surrounding ourselves with people who are true.
Jean Bielecki
March 25, 1912 - November 23, 2006
*Pronounced BOB-chee (Polish for grandmother)