Eggnog and Jelly Brains
Pendulous and proud
I don’t remember this from childhood, but when you go on the swings, you can really feel your brain shake. Or at least I can –– probably some people’s brains are more tightly packed. I’ve gone on the swings in Central Park twice in recent months and both times have felt that it’s a full-body jostle. I’m reminded that my skull is a jelly container and the entirety of my person can constitute a pendulum.
I got a concussion during our wrestling unit in 4th-grade PE. The girls wrestled on one side of a big, leathery curtain, while the boys played hockey on the other. There was no headgear offered, and I took a backward tumble, right onto an area I associate with the word “brainstem.” I spent the next several weeks sitting in the room where dance classes were held, completing a series of word-art pieces where I expressively collaged snatched bits of conversation. (They were choreographing dances to Rudyard Kipling poems, so there was much talk of “Old man kangaroo.”) Seated against the wall, I noticed that some girls had hair on their toes and that you could never predict who would be most graceful at galloping.
At dinner the other night, a waiter approached my friend to ask if she was related to someone named Sofie. Apparently, they have identical voices, although Sofie sings and my friend mostly speaks. Turns out, it’s hard to compare the voice of a non-singer to the voice of someone who exclusively posts singing videos on Instagram. Still, the insistence on a vocal doppelgänger is more interesting to me than when people insist you look like someone. Maybe twice in my life have these comparisons made me feel good, and personally I don’t like those odds. I do, however, enjoy when people tell you who they think they look like. That’s always a psychoanalytically rich treat.
When we were driving in Charleston last week, my family passed a sign for Coburg eggnog, with the swaggering slogan “Better than it has to be.” I don’t think I’ve ever sampled eggnog, so I have no metric for how good it’s supposed to be (my guess is, not very). I think I also have it confused with egg cream, the favored drink of Harriet the Spy. Regardless, I think the Coburg folks are projecting the energy I’d like to achieve in the new year: being better than I have to be, and, to quote Tim McGraw, “better than I used to be.” The nice thing is that a lot of the time the universe/God/The Big Hands Holding Us make us better without our asking. I like to think we’re all pendulous in the swaying hammock of the universe. Or, to quote Tim McGraw, “something like that.”
Happy 2025!