“….let go let go let go. That’s it….THERE IT IS!” My osteopath had, at this point, slid their arms down the length of my back while I was lying face up with my arms crossed, hands resting on my shoulders mummy style. Carefully, they lifted my upper body up off the bed, contorting and swaying my spine left and right in a half-circle pendulum motion, finally jolting me forward hard. I anticipated a loud crack from my mid back and tensed up in response.
Later, they tell me that they’re feeling something about my liver. The liver is a place of anger and resentment. "Do you live with resent?” they ask plainly.
I admit that I am imbued with resentment. About loss, my career, lingering disappointments, unmet expectations, and abandonments. When mom lay dying, her cell phone buzzed with text messages, missed calls, and doorbells left unanswered. “Where were they after my husband died? Now they call?”
I spent about a year holding her resentments for her after she died, building calluses around my own. Osteo listens patiently and responds. I hear you, but let go.
My 43rd birthday was on Saturday. I ordered myself a cake from Tre Mari. It was Italian Rum with vintage icing, green and white.
The Italian rum demarcated every special occasion in my growing life, including baptism, communion, confirmation, and multiple birthdays before age 13. It’s three layers, separated by rum-soaked pan di Spagna with vanilla and chocolate crema pasticcera in between. Tre Mari’s was a heavenly, light, and fluffy version, mild on the booze and the texture of a cloud. Most of us abandoned our icing. It sat in a stiff
plop without its crumb counterpart in tight, perfect waves until washed away.
In an attempt to cling to any form of familiarity with my parents, culture, childhood, and life, I made my own two years ago. I used vanilla bean for the icing, whiskey-soaked maraschino cherries and shaved almond slices for the decor. Stabilizing the frosting proved to be the most challenging aspect, and with assistance from my fiancé, we settled on an Italian meringue. The piping was soft and delicate but sufficient until serving. Comparatively, my cake was saturated with alcohol.
My mom was a shrewd, confrontational, and aggressive woman. Her care was expressed through her jars of “be sure to store in the fridge after you open them” sugo, tupperware of frozen brodo (to bring to work), and bottles of olive oil (on sale at Food Basics). She explained that every man was going to fuck me over if I didn’t anticipate his moves and plan accordingly. This taught me how to trust exactly no one.
When she died, I worried her paranoia and resentment would leap into me, and I would bear the weight of her anger, both big and small. Before she took her final breath, her cancer spread to her liver. I believe that my osteopath was onto something.
When I blew out my birthday candle, I wished for the grace to see each person, experience, situation, space, and place as less transactional, linear, or fixed. If this can be a kind of letting go, then let’s start here.
