fruits de mère
5 weeks ago I broke my fifth metatarsal, was confronted with the reality that I literally could not walk up the stairs to my Brooklyn apartment, and promptly moved into my childhood bedroom where I’ve been incessantly complaining since, like it’s 2005.
A modern phenomenon when you stupidly injure yourself is the new-age, wide-eyed, unsolicited, (((passive-aggressive))) URGE to tell you the meaning. “What do you think the universe is trying to tell you?” , “Maybe this is a sign to let people take care of you — you know you really have a tough exterior.” , etc..
Other people are really wanting me to have the time of my life in this situation. "The summer I broke my foot was the best of my life” , “all hot girls have orthopedic boots” , etc. This is definitely the preferred vibe, just not necessarily the reality of my New Jersey existence.
Brady asked me what “epiphanies” I’ve been having which made me laugh, because the combination of immobility, 100 degree days, and suburban rectangles have me nearly incapable of simple thought, much less one critical or profound.
Jordan, one of my oldest friends on planet earth, said “this is the most Lauren thing I’ve ever heard” — to spend weeks raving about all of my summer plans and how great they would be, only to have to cancel all of them and move in with my parents after a misstep off a curb at a Miami bachelorette party. This of course spun me into a do-I-even-see-myself existential crisis because in my mind’s eye I am perpetually drinking wine on the Canal Saint-Martin, wearing a chic outfit , not falling , and not going to Florida. But of course he’s right - I have a lifelong history of getting injured or dramatically wiping out at inopportune times. And I went to Florida twice this year. And I’m currently wearing a muscle T I found in my childhood dresser, because I am in New Jersey and can’t walk and it’s hot as fuck.
Karina “love(s) this plot twist” — “it seems like a good summer book: 30 something breaks foot, has to go live with parents. it’s juicy.”
And so, incapable of profound thought and explicitly instructed not to bear weight, I spend the summer laying. And while I lay, I don’t so much as think as let words and images and dreams pass through. And during these borderline hallucinations, I eat fruit. And that, I suppose, is objectively juicy.
A well known fact about my childhood home is that it is a place where fruit gets offered, served, and force fed. Since childhood, friends and crushes alike have entered the foyer to Svetlana (my mom) and her bowls of fruit. Never one apple, always a bushel. 5 servings minimum. Since my sojourn began, I’ve had blueberries, raspberries, red currants, sour cherries, sweet cherries, plums, apricots, yellow peaches, white peaches, blackberries, strawberries, watermelons, clementines, and chocolate-covered prunes. While summer doesn’t seem like the opportune time for an injury, I have to admit that fruit-eating does lend itself well to immobility. It elevates the experience of suburban couch-laying to a bourgeois sprawl. Staring into space, barely thinking, dripping peach juice.
I started this newsletter to recommit to a writing practice and a plant-study practice. And while I feel like I waited all year for SUMMER, the greenest and lushest season in the northeast, MY time — to visit the rosehip bushes growing out of sand dunes at Fort Tilden and to pick wild blueberries in the Catskills and to sleep beneath hemlocks in the Adirondacks and to watch my friends get married near cypress trees on the Sonoma coastline and to overexert myself to reach the wildflower fields of the Grand Tetons — perhaps it never was, and certainly, anyway, it cannot be. So I’m grateful for these plants that have found their way to me - FRUITS - literally sugar coated seeds of potential.. can you believe it? they make a hazy summer still sweet.
xo
Lauren