Resilient as Hell*

an essay and a prompt on objects among the detritus

In the thirty years since I left my hometown (a small suburb of Boston), the landscape has transformed. Stores and shopping complexes that were consistent throughout my childhood—things that seemed like they’d be there forever—have been torn down and rebuilt into newer, more expansive things. On this trip, I made a game of predicting what few landmarks might remain. Surely the pizza shop that sat cat-corner from the high school was still there—even though the original high school was recently demolished and a new one is under construction. Yes, if you leave high school, walk by the cemetery, and cross the street, you can still get pizza and and a grinder. (Yes, the cemetery is still there too because death, as I understand it, is permanent.)

A few blocks away, the convenience store, Handy Variety, is still there. As a child, I called the store Frank’s because it was owned by an old man, Frank, who smoked cigars all day behind the counter. Frank is long gone, but the storefront hasn’t changed, and I bet that if I walked in, I could still smell Frank’s cigars and I could buy a pack of Nerds.

Watertown map from 1987, source Watertown Public Library, CC-BY-NC-ND

As I began packing my parents’ home, my fascination with what remains over time continued. I kept setting things aside for myself, not because they were beloved to me, but because they were familiar. I’m reminded of a phrase Sarah used in a post a few weeks ago: “resilient as hell”. She was referring to the poppies who cross-pollinate and pop up everywhere, but the phrase also makes me think of cockroaches, and invites me to hold the idea that certain things remain not because they’re inherently beautiful or even essential, but just because of some kind of tenacity. You’ll always be able to get pizza and grinders on the corner, but that bougie cafe has a ten-year lifespan—you know it and I know it.

I love Sarah’s phrase, resilient as hell, because for me it efficiently complicates an asinine pop-culture narrative we have around resilience. People love to say things like “Kids are so resilient!” maybe to make ourselves feel better about this hellscape we’ve collectively created. But kids, like all humans, aren’t inherently resilient. Kids, like all humans, are vulnerable. Sometimes resiliency is just a happy accident—and sometimes resiliency is an ability to simultaneously hold joy and anger and therefore thrive in uncertain conditions. The phrase resilient as hell reminds me that resiliency doesn’t come from grace or any kind of demureness. It comes from scrappy-ness.

Anyways, I digress. Here’s a list of resilient-as-hell objects from my childhood home:

-a tiny Big Bird fork from childhood, just hanging out in the silverware drawer, no worse for wear

-a single cloth napkin from the 70s with an iconic floral print, somehow remaining amongst the dish towels when all her sisters had been discarded

-my Mom’s waist-length, tie-front cardigan sweater, chestnut brown, worn in heavy rotation in the 1980s and then stored in the back of the closet for forty+ years (no pilling, no musty smell)

-a tortoise-shell case of pressed powder plus an application puff that I swear to god my mom has used continuously since I was born in 1977 and yet it is nowhere near empty and doesn’t smell rancid

-my father’s swimming trunks, used every five years or so

None of us family members are quite so resilient. In the thirty years since I left my family home, all of us (my parents, my siblings, and I) have aged exactly thirty years. Aging, I’ve come to understand, is hard and important work that no one can avoid.

If I take stock of myself, I could make my own list of what small parts of me have thrived while other parts have degenerated. As I approach 50, my arm muscles are stronger than they’ve ever been, though the skin that surrounds them has started to sag. My hair, thinning and brittle from perimenopause hormones, is gradually acquiring gray streaks that intrigue me. And my heart, resilient as hell, gets more stubborn, more guarded, but also more tender by the day.

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a prompt