How Feelings Get Stuck

I felt it. The energy of it fluttering around, its wings hovering, trapped within my landscape of blood, bones, organs, breath. And there it stayed and then seemed to fade, but I know it’s still very much alive, existing unsettled. Waiting to be named, then truly processed, then put to rest— true rest. True peace.

Kindness in a Laundromat in Brooklyn

I rolled my cart of freshly washed clothes over to the wall of dryers but stood back to access the situation.  Many of the top dryers were already spinning away in use, two were out of commission, and there were a few in the process of being filled. The bottom row of dryers were all available.  About to resign myself to claiming two of the bottoms, a lady in the process of filling her third one on the top asked me if I wanted one. 

“If that’s okay, sure,” I replied and watched as she kindly withdrew her clothes and placed them in the dryer below. The gesture quite unexpected and very kind, I told her so. She waved it away and mentioned in passing that she recognized me as she often saw me on the bus. I, in turn, confessed I had never consciously noticed her on the bus. But now that I think about, it’s likely on my after work bus ride which is often packed and at that point of my day I’m very much tuned inward, singularly focused on getting home.

The lady was accompanied by her mother, an older woman manning a couple of the other dryers, assisting her daughter wherever she could.  When I heard them communicating in another language— one I didn’t recognize— their interaction made me think of my mother and how we, too, speak our language when out and about in the world.  

There was love there. I heard it in the way they spoke to each other— it didn’t matter that I didn’t understand the words.  There was love there.  I noticed it in the way the daughter answered her mother’s questions pertaining to which dryer had my things and which had hers (the dryers shared the same coin entry but then one has to manually select the correct one). There was love there.  Vividly apparent in how the daughter found her mom a stool and then playfully petted her when she sat down.  

I ended up using two dryers— the freed up top one and then a bottom one close by. When the timer went off on the one with my heavier clothes, the lady was removing her clothes from a bottom one and told me I was welcome to the 9 minutes left on it.  At first I declined.  But when I noticed the damp of my comforter and other heavy clothing, I, once again, took her up on her kindness. 

When I got ready to leave, I took the opportunity to thank her again and also mention how I enjoyed bearing witness to her interactions with her mother, as it made me think of my own mother and how much I treasured our bond.  She thanked me, sharing she had left her mother at home— encouraged her to sleep in, but her mother had decided to come out anyway and help her with the laundry:) Bidding her goodbye, I told her to say hello to me next time she saw me on the bus.  She laughed and said she would :) 

When I got home, I sent my mother a text telling her how much I loved her.

Early Morning Adventure Involving the Medicine Cabinet

CRASH!

The shelf in the bathroom medicine cabinet— the shelf that until that moment provided support for a variety of jars and bottles— came crashing down. Along with everything that was on it.  As well as a few additional bottles that had been housed below.

I’m proud to say I met this unfolding of events somewhat calmly.  I was surprised of course. This wasn’t what I was expecting when I had opened the cabinet to reach for my hair product.

Assessing the situation through somewhat-calm-lenses, my first concern was spillage and broken glass. Some of my things had fallen into the sink and others, traveling as far as gravity could take them, were now lying marooned on the floor. Luckily, none had spilled, and nothing was broken. So, I righted the upturned and found temporary housing on the sink for the now homeless— because the one thing I knew for certain was that the only reason that shelf fell was because one of its tiny support pins had fallen out. I was almost certain I knew the culprit. It had been loose before— though not to the point of upheaval.  It had loosened because, over time, the hole it was in had widened and so, at the time, I’d re-slotted all four into new holes to avoid impending upheaval.

Standing now, in the aftermath of upheaval, a look into the cabinet confirmed my suspicions.  Three of the four clear plastic support pins were present.  My somewhat-calm-lenses cracked. The pins were tiny. If the missing one had fallen onto the bathroom floor— a floor that provided not much of a contrast to said pin—my search would likely rival that of the needle in the haystack incident. 

Picking up my flashlight, I got down on the floor. Nothing. Standing back up, once more I combed the sink area— even looking behind one the bottles that had been living below the shelf. Again, nothing.

By this point, I was resigning myself to going to Target or a nearby hardware store to find a replacement.  I didn’t want to.  But I needed to get that shelf, and all the bottles and jars who called it home, back into place. So I made the decision to add the unexpected shopping trip to my day’s to-do list.  I also took a moment to verbalize how open I was to this miraculously working out— however that looked and felt. On the heels of that, I promptly revisited all of the places I’d just searched, because, well, hope. The result? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.  Needing to get on with my day, but wanting a visual for when I went shopping, I placed one of the three pins in a clear plastic bag and put it in my purse.  Then I finished getting ready. 

On the spur of the moment I decided I wanted to put on a particular scented oil. So I reached back into the medicine cabinet, took the bottle out of the bag where it lived and found the missing pin. It had been obscured by the bottle and further camouflaged due to the clear plastic nature of pin and bag.

Steadily chanting a mantra of “Thank yous,” I rehoused the shelf to a higher set of holes and moved the tenants back in.  I didn’t have to go pin shopping anymore 🥳 My miraculous outcome after all😊