Long Distance Call…

Leaning back on my couch with my legs folded in an awkward way underneath me, kind of to the side with my feet folded inward and flattened.  Don’t know why it takes me so long to get out of uncomfortable positions sometimes.  Deeply internalized self-hatred, laziness, too much time spent evaluating instead of acting, or a simple enjoyment of my body in awkward contortions?  Maybe a little bit of all four.  In my teens, I often played contortionist solitaire:  I’d twist my body into an odd position, such as my knees over my shoulders with my feet dangling out in front of me, and see if I could keep that position while shifting my weight onto my hands, forming quite the freaky handstand that I could just barely hold for a few seconds, or I’d see how long I could hold a simple position like a split.  I think my split-holding record was four hours, after which I just couldn’t take the stiffness anymore.  I found it very hard to walk for a little while after that one.
 
I just now forced myself to stretch my legs out in front of me and bend around my toes.  Relaxing.  I’m trying to relax tonight.  First night I’m not wrapping presents or writing out Christmas cards or cleaning or (last week) decorating my tree.  Tomorrow, it’s cookie baking.  Haven’t decided what to make yet.  Perhaps the chocolate cookies with big semisweet chocolate chunks and dried cherries that I like to make around Christmas, perhaps simple green and red m&m cookies using my favorite Martha Stewart chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I don’t know.  Kind of want to make something new, but don’t think I’ll have the time or energy.  I’ve been wanting to make a gingerbread layer cake with cream cheese frosting, but I’d have to find a recipe I trust first.  Don’t think I’ll get to it tomorrow.  Have forbidden myself from baking this Sunday, because late at night, I’m going to pick up my baby sister from the airport.  It’s her first time flying.  I should try to just relax and have fun, because last year, when I picked up my other little sister, Maddie, from the airport around this time of year, I had spent all day baking yummy things for her to eat, and was completely exhausted and spent when I went to get her.  As soon as she walked in, she asked for some sweets I’d made, so I put six giant cookies in a big bowl for her and she gobbled them all up.  Maddie eats like a teenage boy, maybe more.  I love that about her.  I put about ten pounds of candy in her stocking, thought I really went overboard, but none of it survived more than two days.  She texted me earlier and asked me to read to her on skype tonight, which I like to do once in a while, so I read her “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas, a little book I’d been looking for here and there since I was her age, 17.  Finally found it a few months ago in a used book store tucked away behind some places I always pass.  Was in perfect condition, and only $3.  I talked about lots of funny things she used to do when she was a baby and toddler, and what our interactions were like back then, when I was the age she is now, and she laughed and laughed and laughed.  I showed her the tree this year, and played her some of the ornaments, and she watched the cats run around, and badmouthed Aria, the sister who’s coming in two days, and I humored her and took everything lightly.  She seems very jealous, and I feel for her, and I miss her a lot, but she had her turn last year.  She’s known since then that it would likely be Aria this year, and besides, if Maddie doesn’t study over this break and pass her finals when she gets back to school, unlike last year when she visited, she won’t get to graduate with her class.
 
Maddie told me something I find quite odd and interesting tonight.  When Aria and my mother leave the house together, and she’s left alone with my grandmother, my grandmother calls her by my name and treats her like she’s me.  Calls her over for things I would have been interested in when I was Maddie’s age, things much too girly for Maddie, talks about my poetry society and senior girl scouts and literary criticism team and refers to the homosexual altar boy down the street who was my good friend.  At first, Maddie kept reminding my grandmother of her own name and that she wasn’t me, tried to tell her she was confused.  My grandma would acknowledge it, laugh and apologize, and then continue that behavior several minutes later.  Maddie told me that lately, to make it easier for herself and our grandma, she just goes along with it.  She tries to talk like me, and act like me, say things she thinks I would say, etc.  And another odd, but actually quite fitting, detail of this is that when Aria and my mom return home, as soon as my grandmother sees them, she knows who Maddie is again, and immediately begins interacting with her like she normally would, when she knows who she is.  My grandma and I lived together for a bunch of years, just the two of us, in that house, you see, so that’s why my grandma’s confusion makes sense in its own way, and why her trigger back to the present also makes perfect sense to me.  I find it all very interesting and wish I could actually be there with her for those brief periods when she thinks I am.  
 
My grandmother and I were always similarly poised; she was and still is always well-dressed, air of sophistication about her, puts on a charming and pleasant face for people around, but normally keeps a certain amount of emotional distance from people, due to both not wanting to reveal her inner self and not wanting to deal with their ridiculousness.  I think I have a bit more of a streak of wildness in me, though I do like to keep its symptoms mostly secret.  Times when I’m faced with having to deal with people, I miss the solitude of living with her.  We mostly stayed out of each other’s ways, except when we’d go out to lunch or dinner sometimes, or shopping, or all those times she’d call me into her room to look at something on her tv or ask me something about my life.  She sent me four small fruit cakes from Collins Bakery in Texas, as she does every year, and though I don’t like regular fruit cake, like most people, only one of them is traditional fruit cake, and the others are Pineapple Pecan, Apple Cinnamon, and Apricot Pecan.  The Apricot Pecan is mine, and William eats the others.  He can have some of mine too, of course.  I called my grandmother earlier tonight to tell her the fruit cakes arrived and thank her profusely.  She always seems happy on the phone, no matter what’s going on in her life.  My mom tells me what’s really going on in her life.  I miss her dearly.
 
One day last week, when I was extremely bored, between my Christmas tree and other projects, I thought I heard a very faint ringing in the hallway.  I checked my phone, but it hadn’t rung.  Couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from, and then I walked into the living room and looked at the ornaments on my tree and thought, Wouldn’t it be funny if it was my little chattering phone ornament ringing by itself?  If something supernatural was calling me?  I began to laugh hysterically by myself, would have looked crazy to an onlooker.  I thought of that Twilight Zone episode, Long Distance Call, about the old woman calling her grandson from beyond the grave on the little toy phone she gave him while she was still alive.  I laughed some more.  Figured out, after I heard other strange noises, that it was coming from my upstairs neighbors’ apartment, from the vent in the bathroom next to the hallway.  Phone must have rung up there.  Here’s my little chattering phone ornament, miniature replica of one of my toys when I was a very small child:
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And here’s another ornament that plays a familiar theme song, on an old tv that looks very much like the one that sat in my grandmother’s living room until the late 90s, until it ceased to work one day and I convinced her to buy a new one.  Just a year or two before I moved away.