COMFORT

 Today I went to buy a goose down comforter for my bed but I didn't know what size. Full size? Queen size?  How much my life has changed since I used to have a King size, since I used to know what size my bed was. In between then and now, so many pieces of knowledge have fallen off or away or have collided with other bits and scraps of awareness or understanding.  I tell you, there is always something.

"What's the difference between the full size and the queen?" I asked the woman with the furrowed brow standing behind the counter at Macy's.  And then I gave a little giggle because my question sounded so ridiculous, as if I were asking something about proportional variations of the female   English royalty.  "Well," said Miss Furrowed Brow, "the queen size is larger than the full size, which is smaller."

"Ah," I said, nodding my head. "I see." 

Live big, I thought to myself. I bought the queen.

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 Comfort appears in odd places. Last week I read Donna Tarrt's masterful book, "The Goldfinch, (the inside cover flap said the book is "masterful" and indeed, it is, in three days. So good was it that I wouldn't allow myself to drive to the grocery store for food and instead chomped down a stale bagel and a can of green beans for dinner. This was last Sunday.  That last night of reading, the book's words comforted me as few books can and and no food could and, when I had finished with it's seven hundred and something number of pages, I dove right back in and began reading the last two chapters again. Sometimes food is comfort, other times, words.

I think my mother's words were a great comfort to me.  Well, her words and her vast collection of song lyrics.  Well, you musta been a beautiful baby, 'cuz, baby, look at you now/buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, I don't care if I never get back/Hey, good lookin', whatcha got cookin, how 'bout cookin' somethin' up for me/You say tomato and I say tomato, you say potato and I say potato/And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I'm not alone/And they thwam and they thwam all over the dam/cuz today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.......and on and on and on.  Her lyrics, her songs, stunned me, moved me, pinned me to certain rooms, to the big brown and red tweedy couch, to the kitchen table and chairs, to the linoleum floors, to the bright blue Plymouth we drove around in.

Once, my father drove the blue Plymouth over an embankment, leaving the three of us in a precarious position, with the car stuck, as it were, stuck and nearly teeter-tottering in mid-air between earth and water.  As my father gingerly moved his way out of the car and began attempting and successfully so, to push the car back towards full, solid ground again, my mother jabbed me in the ribs and said, "You know what we can do about this?"

"No," I said, "what?"  I was very scared, I remember, as it didn't seem as if either she or I had the power to do much of anything.  "We can sing!" she said and began at once, seeing a chorus of that song that went something like, "Or would you like to swing on a star, carry moon beams home in a jar and be better off than you are....or would you rather be a mule?" 

Singing. Okay. Now, that was comfort.
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Sometimes I put movies on.  Some people have comfort foods, I have comfort films, new ones and old ones and in all sorts of categories.  There's Bergman's Fanny and Alexander for the "Happy- family-Christmas scenes" but for those scenes only, and then I shut the whole film down.  There's the Marx brother's songs and dances, there's Woody Allen's Husband's and Wives and Hannah and Her Sisters and Midnight in Paris, most especially for the scene in which the young writer from Pasadena, who is transposed each night at midnight into the early Parisian scene which includes Stein and Toklas and Heminway and the Fitzgeralds.....sits down for a drink one night with Luis Bunuel and Salvadore Dali, played by, Adrien Brody, rhapsodizes about "the rhinoceros".  I love that scene. 

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There are clouds.  There is having the New York Times delivered right to your doorstep every single day of the week (as I do).  There are good, funny, entertaining neighbors who cook good, yummy, food.  There are new thick towels.  There are old, dear friends.  There are ferry boats that don't sink, even when the wind is blowing like all get out. There is music, of course, Gershwin and Cole Porter and Kurt Weil and the blues and jazz and rock n' roll and more than that, too much to mention, really. And there are old screenings of tap dancing by Astaire and and Gene Kelly and Ann Miller and those  African American tappers who were so incredible they could tap your eyeballs out.  There is an attitude I will call "Mutual", meaning common, shared, together, both, as in mutual hope, mutual interest, mutual likes, mutual beliefs.  There is pizza. Ice cream, most especially pistachio.
There are eyeglasses.  Bathtubs.

There is my ex-patient, who studies voice.  Her job is a very serious one, her level of expertise and responsibility is extremely high.  Many people depend upon her.  Many of us depend upn her.  When she isn't doing her job, she studies voice.

"I find it comforting," she says,"isn't it wonderful."