Be[ing]

It’s the first night of Hanukkah and my husband and I are about to light the candles. We have never done this before, I’ve never celebrated any Jewish holiday without my family. “I am your family,” my husband says. He’s right, but it feels different without my mom’s hand on my back and my dad’s voice singing the prayers and my sister near my shoulder, who rolls her eyes when I look back. We are using my husband’s father’s menorah. The menorah is made of brass and there are eight Maccabees at the base holding up the candles. The candles’ holders rest on the Maccabees’s backs and they look tired. He asks me to sing the bracha but I am embarrassed. He plays a recording of a woman singing the brachas he found through google.“Her emphasis on the words are totally wrong. That’s not the melody we use.” I sound like my father. “Is she even Jewish?” I sing the words quietly: Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha olam, asher kid’shanu b-mitzvotav, v-tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel hanukah. I enjoy lighting the candles though I don’t tell my husband. I don’t want him to know I have some joy in being Jewish. I don’t want him to ask again about the mezuzah I had once said I wanted to put on the door. This year has been different without my depression, with a future I am looking forward to, so I buy us a present. I love presents and I tell B when we open them I promise to be surprised. He doesn’t care about presents. “How can you not like presents?” He shrugs his shoulders and finishes braiding his hair. I push the Amazon box and two other small boxes to the back of my closet. “Don’t go in there,” I tell him, but he never does. I bought us a themed gift: coffee grinder, bag of good beans and two monogramed cups that when put side by side spell out BE. He hung them on hooks under the cupboard and every time I go to make coffee BE is suspended.

Be is a verb as in exist or occur. It is in the future tense, often preceded by to. Be is a verb used with a present participle to form continuous tenses. Be is also used with a past participle to form the passive mood such as She had been depressed or She is loved by her husband. Synonyms of Be: act, abide, continue, endure, inhabit. B and I are continuing, we have endured. We inhabit the word and blow up their letters until they expand enough to float away to something better and new.

To be verbs describe or tell us the condition of people as in one of Shakespeare’s most renown soliloquies. In Hamlet, Hamlet questions to be or not to be; to live or to die. We have this in common. My words were much plainer: I want to die, I want to sleep for a very long time.

I invite Hamlet over for coffee. I say it straight, without iambic pentameter. Would you like to come over for coffee? Hamlet says yes and joins me in the sunroom. I pour him a cup of coffee into the B mug while I pour mine into the E.

“I’ve been thinking about you. I was hoping we could spare the iambic pentameter and talk in the 21st century.”

“I have heard that from the modern people here. Hey, What up?”

“Hi works fine. My favorite play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Yes, that was many people’s favorite play. Puck brags about it all the time. It’s obnoxious.”

“I probably shouldn’t have started our conversation like that. You are much more relatable than Puck. You said the most famous line- To be or Not to be.”

“Really?”

“It won’t ever be forgotten. That’s something I had been thinking about for over a year.”

“Yes, to be or not to be, that is the question.”

“I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

“That’s good to hear. It’s a tough question. I didn’t come up with it. The words were put in my mouth.”

“Maybe, but they made you so relatable and you said them beautifully.”

“Really? Thank-you. I didn’t get to be. I was poisoned.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. You did have revenge.” There is silence. “…Anyway, I’ve been thinking now about being.”

“That’s a good word to contemplate. Maybe a soliloquy could be written about that.”

“Sure, but not by Shakespeare. He’s dead.”

“Oh.” Hamlet has the same look as he did when he heard his father had been killed. Stuck between mournful and rage. He rubs at the small circular bald spot toward the front of his head until his skin looks like it’s on fire.

Our heads turn toward the window and we drink our coffee in silence.

To be or not to be remain in their verb form and move to my husband and me. We have been living in this tense for two years. To be is new, it is after sixty-five family sessions, after my voice rising too loud as I get out of bed in the morning. It’s after grabbing his coat and knocking the hairbrush on the ground as he leaves for “some air.” It is after our words missing one another like a bad high five. It’s after stopping at my parent’s condo after work, after a particularly bad morning. I was crying before my mom opened the door. “What’s wrong?” “I just needed a hug from my mom.” I went into the condo. My dad was at the counter reading the paper, I waved. She pulled me in and I lay my head on her chest. It was nice and I felt safe like I did when I was young, before I knew I had bipolar, before I realized I could be a person who could get divorced. “Relationships are hard, your dad and I struggled, remember?” I shook my head. He had moved out and lived with my cousin for a while. My sister and I thought they would get divorced. I don’t know what brought them back together. “You love each other. You can do this.” Her voice wasn’t scolding or harsh, it was soft like she was putting me to bed or telling me she believed I could get well again. I didn’t tell her as I cried how maybe I wanted not to be, that in finding me meant moving on from us, the real reason I was crying.

To be transforms from verb to present participle- being. Being is in the present tense and in motion. Being is to have moved through the Perfect Storm, to move out of Lost. Being is writing this blog.

My husband and I were sitting on Couch. I lay on the busted spring which was made soft by the blanket covering it. We were hanging out, something we do more often, a piece of US we have been trying to be. “Do you think I could meet Tig?” I asked him. We were watching standup with Tig Notaro. His body became rigid and pushed itself back into Couch’s arm. His eyebrows tilted in like the V formation of angry geese. “You are asking an impossible question. I can’t do this for you.” This conversation was going in the wrong direction, unexpected, like the Asian melon I had bought. I should have known better than to buy a melon whose name begins with bitter. “I’m just fucking around. I used to make you laugh. You liked this weirdness about me.” When B asked me to marry him he read a Dr. Seuss quote that spoke about when you fall in love you find someone who accepts your weirdness. “Sometimes I think you don’t accept me.” He was quiet and not looking at me. “ I like me. I like who I am. Do you like me?” I hesitated at that last part, like when deciding to toss an apple core from the car window. “Yes, I like you.” Then I said something about the bed and breakfast. “You are asking me to move. When we met I said I loved this city.” He sat up straight. “I talked about this dream. You have agreed. I need more.” “More!” He stands up and moves behind the chair. More is a threatening word. It means disappointment and not enough; it means I am not accepting. He says, “I’m going to lie down.” I say, “Me, too.” Being when used here with a continuous present participle is: we are having a difficult time being with each other; we will be going to bed with our backs to one another. In the middle of the night I move my hand close to his and touch pinky fingers. I was testing. Early, before it is time to get up, he puts his arm around me and pulls me close.

B’s father is frail and his grey hair is so thin the rubber band doesn’t have much to hold on to in his pony tail. His father’s shoulders hunch forward like he has given up, and in some ways he has. We found out he has Parkinson’s and without a shot, costing $15,ooo, he would be hunched down to the floor. B doesn’t see his family much and with the pandemic it had been three years. They don’t live that far away, an hour drive. Growing up, his father had not been very nice- hitting him, using mean words, Now, in his old age, he is no longer a threat and if B wanted, he could push him over or put words to how he made him feel without consequence. He’s been thinking about forgiving words used in the present tense, without the passive voice of have been. He has told them about our bed and breakfast plans and they push out enthusiasm. Their enthusiasm is reserved while my family’s is overwhelming. I wonder if he gets jealous when he is with my family? We are loud and expressive, we hug and kiss and see each other nearly every week. I have asked him how he feels, not if he were jealous but how different our families are. “I think about it. I get embarrassed because I know how hard it is to see mine.” This is true. On our wedding day his father did not speak to me until I went up to him to say hi, like I wasn’t the bride but a spectator in a crowd of people. Being is as much about my husband as it is about me. He is learning to be with his family as I am learning to be with mine. We are also learning to be with each other. We practice being when sitting on Couch or in the sunroom, our favorite room, eating dinner, talking about our future. We are being when the noise from the street stands in as conversation.

B wakes up early and makes coffee. I am sitting on Couch reading the news. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me sometimes. We can talk about these things with each other. We don’t need to wait until family sessions.” He’s right, we don’t have to wait. I’m often afraid the only way we can talk to each other is in those sessions. Being is accepting and we are still working on that. I walk into the kitchen when I hear the coffee pot whistle. B pulls the mugs from the hooks. I think of all the coffee mugs I am collecting for our bed and breakfast. He likes this idea, too. I read 75 percent of bed and breakfasts are owned by couples, the next highest percentage is by women. We sit down in the sunroom at our favorite table; this room is our favorite place. He found the table at a thrift store for forty dollars. The wood is grey and the table can open up to sit four but we leave it for two. I pick at the blue waxy residue leftover from the dripping Hannukah candles. He sets the E mug on the table and sits across setting down the B. I push my mug up to his like my cat Lucy pushes her backside into my leg when she wants me to know she is there. B-E. I blow on the coffee and look up at B who is reading the news on his phone. Hamlet pulls up a folding chair, the cheap kind used when actors are rehearsing a play, the kind that are easy to break. He is wearing a white frock with black joggers, no shoes. “That’s not true,” he says. “I know,” I answer and blow on the hot coffee. “You are writing your blog, not fiction.” B looks up but appears not to see Hamlet. “What?” B asks. “I’m writing the last part of the blog and I wrote that you set the B and E coffee mugs on the table but you didn’t do that.” “Do you want me to?” “No.” “Do you want him to, really?” Hamlet reiterates. “No, that wouldn’t be truthful.” They are both looking at me as if I am not telling the truth or asking for what I need. “I don’t. Drinking out of coffee shop mugs is fine. It’s the truth. This is the ending, except Hamlet wouldn’t be here.” I’m quiet. “I lied. It would be much easier to end this piece if I could just make it up. I don’t know what to fucking do now.” Hamlet speaks before B has a chance. “It’s you two being together, right?” “Yes, but can I write something more poetic? Shakespeare would?” B is now aware of Hamlet’s presence but not sure as to who he is. He never read the play. Hamlet and B are looking at my fingers hovering above the keyboard as if they were a wild animal about to bolt.“Fine. It’s not like you are even really here.” I push the computer towards B. Hamlet’s mouth is open like he is trying to catch something in it. I see he is hurt. I tap his arm with my palm and am surprised how solid he is. Hamlet stands up and takes the folding chair out of the sunroom as if the scene has ended. He doesn’t return. “I feel bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” B shrugs his shoulders and begins reading the news again on his phone.