Our new family counselor is a sandy haired middle-aged man wearing a casual suit. He stands amidst a living room scene of sofas and chairs, lamps and tables. Mom’s brought us here because she says we’re out of control. Says we’re making a mess of the family.
I trace my first initial in a layer of dust on the reception counter, thinking about how everything shifts, cracks, gathers dust, turns, or changes at times, and how those shifts can really affect my mood. Maybe I should tell the counselor how I have to keep things in good order all around me or I can’t breathe. Maybe I should say that I’m not making a mess of the family. The family mess is making a mess of me.
I always have to be rearranging the messy jumble of knick-knacks that Mom steadily accumulates into small piles around the house. I spend hours each week placing porcelain figurines, clay pottery, crystal vases, and plastic potted plants in separate but equal spaces within the house, seeking out abandoned corners, shelves and cubbyholes where the objects can stand alone to be better viewed and more properly valued. I can’t rest until I dump deep pools of water from the bathroom soap dish, fix scrunched up rugs by the doorways, melt wax to fix leaky candles, and stagger stacks of magazines so they don’t tilt and slide off to one side.
I want Mom and my sister Toni to know that it takes a lot of effort to always be gauging the placement and condition of the piles of things stacking up and collecting dust on cluttered counters and floors and shelves all around our house, throwing me off center, crowding me out. But I’m very tired today. And trying to explain myself will make me even more tired, so I won’t say anything.
When I was younger, my Mom said I was like the girl in The Princess and the Pea where the princess feels a tiny pea through twenty mattresses and can’t sleep.
