East Nashville Blues

It’s funny what time does to a girl.

We get older and we start to fumble and have mis-steps and flailing hands and incomplete thoughts. There was a time when I could slash an offender with a rapier wit that even David Sedaris would be knocked out by. I had ideas. I had nerve and gumption. There was a time when I could run circles around the other waiters in whatever restaurant I was working at (while going to school full time, while raising a son). I could do things! There was a time when I was kind of neat.

So I am having one those times in life when I don’t feel like that girl anymore. Not only do I not feel like that girl, but I don’t feel anything even remotely familiar to anything that I have ever felt before. It all started two nights ago when I went to work at a lovely little European café in East Nashville. I was witness to my own ineptitude and fumbling older self.  It wasn’t pretty.

This café, it should be said, is full of beautiful, well put together folks that abound with utter confidence. They float about the café with serene smiles and such a crisp sense of self.  Enter me: tired, haven’t bought new clothes in three years, uncollected lady who can’t complete a thought and really needs a cup of coffee – or a nap. It should also be said here that working in restaurants (the right one, anyway) is something I love to do. Granted, it is something I have to do on occasion (reminder: my husband’s an artist, I am a writer; we try to avoid the “starving” part of the artist bit) but it is something I truly enjoy and do quite well. If you find the right place you are gifted with the company of the smartest, funniest and savviest people you will ever meet.

Savvy I am no longer – the last two years of nose-to-grindstone survival has taken some of my spunk and collectedness. I realized it when, walking up a flight of stairs, completely viewable to every person in the place, with two hands full of very expensive crystal glass ware, I stumbled (a nice way of saying that I completely busted my ass). I picked myself up, no broken glass, thinking “jesus Lisa, what are you doing here???�

The night went downhill from there.

 I came home whimpering to my husband about how I have lost it – I can’t hack it with other people my age who have never let themselves get soggy with mundane, everyday life trials. I went through the whole horrible evening. I told him about how in incapable I was of having minute conversation, how uncomfortable I felt around people whom I normally have so much in common with, the “stumble�, the aches in my legs and arms.. I sounded like an old lady with a bad back. It was miserable and silly.

Husbands are good for lots of reasons. Mine, specifically, can make anything seem a lot less horrid than it really is. He has a remarkable way of reminding me that I’m still neat, even if I feel (deep down) that he is just being nice. He gives good advice and makes sense of my crazy, illogical brain.

Husband’s insightful words:  You aren’t ever going to be that frightfully energetic and bounding-with-ambitiousness youth again – which should be followed by a huge “thank god�.  You get a chance, every once in awhile, to up your ante.  What you do with that chance is up to you. You have an opportunity to get better or you have the option to wallow in your lousiness. It’s nothing but growing pains. We have ‘em forever.  We’re meant to be better than we once were and to acknowledge that we aren’t as good as we can be yet – in between therein lies a great land of awkwardness that sometimes crescendos with you face down on wooden stairs trying not to break your nose and praying that no one is looking at you. You then have an option, do you just succumb to your stumbling gracelessness and stop trying to sort yourself out, or do you get your self together so that you can move it on to better places? I suppose if you take the former option, then you may as well just get used to your face being smeared on the floor, even though at this point I feel like it is my assigned fate. Obviously, sorting yourself out seems like the more appetizing option.

So, I’m sorting myself out then and hopefully the growing pains and awkwardness won’t last much longer. I’ll just be certain to stay focused and to watch for steep steps.