Peeling fruit in one long strip

and the luxury of daydreaming

In 2018, my dream of writing a book was slipping into the ether of SoCal’s marine layer. I’d wake up to the cool fog that hung around the coast every morning, almost 365 days a year. There was also the less tangible fog in my head, which was there because California was and always will be a bit of a daydream to me. I still couldn’t grasp that the Pacific Ocean was ten minutes from my front door after years of wishing it were true.

But, by the time the sun burned off the fog, and I had enough coffee to blitz myself into a workday, my days filled with god-knows-what, and suddenly the day was ending. Golden hour mixed with happy hour. One year passed and then four. I can’t believe how little I did, with so much time, especially compared to today. Which, lately, if I’m lucky, I can get lost in thought for maybe 60 seconds in the diaper/paper towel aisle at Hannaford. Which, if you’ve ever seen how little $100 worth of paper products looks in your cart, you also know daydreaming costs money. You’re not thinking about creative plot developments, you’re wondering how you might be able to clone yourself to work four jobs to pay for various things you hold or wipe shit with.

But still, I know my best work comes from some small seed sown from a daydream. Even though I can’t measure tangible “things,” from my time living in San Diego, I can say for certain it was a period where I was always dreaming up ideas, stories, and film plots. Even if I never did execute them in any way.

Because I am an ever-present re-arranger of furniture, I blamed my surroundings for my lack of anything resembling a manuscript. (Truth be told, I didn’t even know what that word meant before 2018, ditto: “mss”). I set a goal to take 70% of my leftover paycheck and throw it in a high-interest account. I figured if I could sustain myself for three months without a job, I would probably get close to writing something substantial.

I did somehow manage to pull it off. “It,” being the creative world fostered. But “it,” not being the work necessarily. My husband and I found a tiny home among the magical forests of Welches, Oregon. You could hike a snow-capped mountain at breakfast and jump into a summery river by lunch. I believed that this setting alone would act as both nail and nail gun that I desperately needed to pin down my free-floating ideas onto the page.

A positive pregnancy test and first-trimester nausea of epic proportions, is what I blamed for leaving there with three, maybe four almost unusable chapter summaries. I was so sick, I couldn’t look at a screen, or even a piece of paper without wanting to put my head between my knees. When I felt so-so, I tried to revert back to my daydreamy self I used to be so good at. I spent long afternoons squinting through the cobwebs in my head trying to activate that corner of my brain that was so aloof and whimsical. It was nowhere to be found. I “pretend” daydreamt, which means I stared off into space a lot, looking the part of a daydreamer. But really, I was thinking about how much I missed deli meat and how much deli meat made me want to yack. Weeks would pass when I’d realize I hadn’t thought about my book once.

I panicked that my nest egg was going to waste. In search of something palpable, I started to “research my generation” by watching movies from the 90s/00s. I finally started to feel like this was a worthy endeavor. I was carrying a child after all, and soon having time to watch movies would be a luxury.

It was toward the end of our time in Oregon that I decided Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan was worth another look. I hadn’t seen it in over a decade, so I dug my wobbly body into the rented armchair and let my mind slip into the drippy 90’s world of houseboats atop moonlit water, formica kitchens, and characters talking to themselves in perfect monologue.

So here it is in a sentence: Sleepless in Seattle is another film about a dead mother, whose domestically challenged husband and not-sad-enough kid are left to navigate the world after her maternal care evaporates from earth. What will they do?! Find a replacement of course. It’s the only way. (Putting a pin in this topic for sure.)

Being a pregnant “mature” woman, compared to the girl I was when I first watched the movie, had me wide-eyed in every scene. The themes felt so deep, dark, and existential. I was hooked. Then, just when you’re wondering how they might tackle some of these tougher subject, you’re brought back to a Hollywood reality. One night, Tom Hanks’ son, Jonah, has a nightmare. He wakes up in a fake sweat, and cries to his father. In this tender scene, Hanks tries to comfort him. “I’m starting to forget her,” Jonah says. Gut-punchy silence. Hanks thinks for a long minute, smiles to himself, and finally replies: “She could peel an apple in one long curly strip. The whole apple.” It ends the scene.

Sometime later, Jonah ends up calling a late-night radio show for advice, in hopes of getting his dad back in the saddle. (It’s so weird when movies push this storyline. Zero 10-year-olds I knew wanted that for their single parents). Cut to a kitchen in the middle of the night, the ear under the shaggy-blonde pixie cut of Meg Ryan perks up at Hanks on the airwaves. She sits at her kitchen table, and peels an apple in one (ok technically two) long curly, strips!

Spoilers ahead: Jonah takes it as a sign, that this woman is the right person for his dad because she can peel an apple just like his mother. Hanks and Ryan fall in love without ever meeting. Then in person, it’s love at first sight again and thank god they’re both attracted to one another. Jonah is totally okay with all of it, having orchestrated the whole thing.

…

After Oregon, we eventually made our way to Maine. I did end up writing part of a book, and I also ended up having two daughters. Our bills multiplied. I prioritized commercial photography and copywriting over my writing. Our second daughter was born last September after my mother passed away from a long (and yet short) bout with cancer. I wrote about wanting to grieve her, but I honestly never did, and to this day still push it away. After she was gone, an excruciating pregnancy met me. Then, when Frankie was born, Ian and I endured an almost intolerable first three months of colic. Two months after she was born, I decided to start a new job. When my first panic attack came and went I kept on going, the way you run into a weird sprint after tripping on a crack in the sidewalk. After my second, I thought to myself I might need some help. But, after my third, I realized I was on the total brink of a nervous breakdown. “No wonder,” people keep telling me. “I saw that coming,” more chimed in. I imagined my San Diegan self, clutching a notebook of screenplay ideas, riding my beach cruiser to the boardwalk, fading into the same fog. The girl I used to be was disappearing from my memory. “I’m starting to forget her,” I would say to myself.

One morning, between panic attack #1 and #2, I was making my four-year-old lunch. On nights without any sleep, let me set the scene: Mother Coco is clanging around cutting boards, knives, and cups far too loudly, which I know is an ineffective and annoying act to witness. It’s also my lazy, satisfying way of announcing to the household, how over this shit I was. At this moment, I am likely shooting glances over at Ian, who is attempting to rock our new baby whose calm, happy face we have yet to meet since she was born. I’d punctuate this zen vignette by looking at the clock every second, terrified I wouldn’t have enough time in the day to make it through my list. Then I’d look down at my body and feel deflated that the last time I was at a yoga class, it was a different year. Enter, text message: school is closed due to snow/sick teacher/whatever else. Enter: total, fucking, meltdown.

Holding a peeler in one hand, and an apple in the other, I looked down at the lunch I was preparing Ryan, aka the murder scene. It looked like I was trying to zest the damn fruit, while also making apple juice from whatever was left. A hundred red shreds of the skin littered the counter and tears just fell uncontrollably. I thought about Meg Ryan, dreamily staring into space, listening to the sound of her future lover on the radio, carving the fruit slow, evenly. Tom Hanks falls in love with that Meg, not the one five years later, crying over a snow day.

Nothing about me anymore moved slowly or breathed deeply. I couldn’t remember the last time I daydreamed. I remember how hard it was to even conjure a simple one back in Oregon. My life was a burst of short, choppy, huffs, built on a fight or flight PTSD from hearing your children scream or whine for hours on end. School, work, playdates, sleep-train, text friends small talk, try to sleep, wake up too early, repeat. School closures happened on my busiest days, and doctors’ appointments were somehow only available at midday. Go right past Go and go to hell if your kids are getting shots at those appointments because we guarantee a fever next, which will keep them home for an additional four days. Pepper in horrific news that sends the social media “community” into such a judgment frenzy, even opening my phone to unwind (lol) would send me into an anxious spiral wondering if someone would soon shame me for posting a photo of my garden instead of a charity.

I thought of Meg Ryan’s far-off look, that daydream doe-eye all leading men fall for. None of them crush on the hard-edged, rushed, curt-tongued woman who hasn’t slept or been slept with in years. The woman who has no time to wander in meadows and come to cocktail parties with witty observations about life and meaning. And then, when you do have those storylines, the man is always telling the leading woman to chill the fuck out, and that somehow makes her fall in love with them. (Look, I loved the Long Shot, but I couldn’t help but feel ripped off when Seth Rogen threw an XL t-shirt over Charlize Theron’s bangin’ bodycon dresses, slipped her some molly, and turned her back into the fun-loving babysitter she used to be. Come on Secretary of State! Let loose a little!)

We know it’s more fun, and better for our mental health, to be the girl who daydreams and breathes deeply. But for most, we simply can’t. The structure of our society leaves too little room for “idleness” — a concept villainized by capitalism. The demanding and draining nature of child-rearing and/or career-building leaves most overwhelmed and drained. Even the dated and devastatingly flawed paternity/maternity leave options point to a society that still values the men at work over the women. “Take a break,” we tell mothers. “Go to yoga, the spa, get your nails done, self-care.” Take your pick, or do all of the above and go broke. Nothing really fixes the permanence of a life-forever changed. We know mothers have to mourn their past selves, but we also judge them for wanting a Mother’s Day that doesn’t involve children. Self-care gets laughed at by men, because it’s already so entwined in their being. Self-care gets snickered at by women, because we know men are watching us, snickering.

So here I am, the once slow-moving, deep-breathing, butterfly-chasing Meg Ryan in me, has become a mother who cries while peeling apples. I wonder if the memory of Tom Hanks’ wife peeling her apple was before or after having Jonah? I wonder what else he could have told his son about the woman who bore him, that I don’t know, could have had a little more substance? I think about this as how I must in some ways, distill the memory of my mother, who is no longer here to fight back and fill in the blanks. (My mom did used to peel fruit, but with this giant knife I always told her made me nervous. To prove to me it was nothing, she covered her hand in fake blood one afternoon after school, started fake screaming, and told me to call 911. To be fair, she started laughing before I hit the second 1, so dodged a bullet there.)

As it usually happens, so many of the small things I obsess over, like a scene in a movie from over thirty years ago, stem from some deeper root tied to my mother. I’m finding that this might be the only way through my grief with her. Still, it brings up important questions I don’t want to push aside anymore.

What do I want my kids to remember of me during my motherhood? That I was calm and beautiful and fawned over? Or that I bled, and cried, and battled my personality into existence. That I was nervous and high-strung, or chill and checked out? A human capable of both/and. I think I want to contain volumes, sequels, appendixes, and addendums. I know I want to be remembered for more than how I peeled my fucking fruit.

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