The car had transformed into a carnival ride. Not one of the big and flashy ones from the Schueberfouer, with a hyped-up DJ wearing Oakley sunglasses, all the while the most overplayed radio-hit of choice from Eldoradio blasts on a loop.
No.
My white Peugeot 107 was transformed into a tiny animal merry-go-round, were you pretend to be a good parent and be safe by strapping the flimsiest of cords across your precious child.
Going through the motions of putting on my seatbelt, starting the car, turning on the lights and backing out of the driveway onto the main road was too automated for my liking, too seamless to be real. Or safe. I kept driving on our home street towards the highway, took the first slip road exit onto the A7, the sun just bright enough that I could check my blind spot without any glare. I didn’t really need sunglasses but I put them on anyway. Barely a cloud in the sky and no cars on the road. Everything was fine.
But it wasn’t. If the cord was just a bit too loose, if the kid just happened to be too close to the edge of his seat when the cord came undone, just as the tiny pink elephant went around the back and no adult happened to be standing by at that exact moment. If you had one tiny slip, forgot your distance, forgot you might be sick, that they might be sick and relax for a little bit. Get too close. Touch stuff and then touch your face and then touch someone.
Seven minutes later, I exited the highway back into suburbia. I always liked this part of my trip, between Lorentzweiler and Heisdorf, as most of the houses on either side of the main road stood old and proud, with that early 20th century vibe that reminded me of Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting that my mum and I got to see when we visited the MoMA during our banging NYC trip.
The thought of The City, our paint-by-numbers DIY tour and my mum and I having such a great time walking anywhere we wanted and eating all the pizza always made me happy. I started to feel more like myself again, and the playlist from my phone switched to Anoraak’s Figure. The melding of my mind and the lyrics that ‘spoke to me’ at that exact moment was so perfect, so Netflix-series soundtrack to my life right then and there, that I could not help but smile wide at how much of a fucking hipster-millennial I was. Oh yes my friend, we will figure it out.
I got to the last roundabout and took the third exit to enter the side road that leads to the Delhaize in Walferdange. The music stopped.
YouTube channel Sideways has a video titled How to Make Music Sound Scary, that more or less boils down the formula of any effective scary movie soundtrack is having a really high sound (baby music and kittens) playing at the same time as a really low sound alert (something bigger wants to eat you) and nothing in the middle. This is because the effect causes a cognitive dissonance of not knowing if you should relax or be on high alert, and that is what freaks you out.
So I’m now arriving at the supermarché and my phone is silent and I swear I can hear, as if it’s coming in Dolby surround system, the music from the Inception trailer. Except it is not a sound but a contrast of scenery that fills my ears with my heartbeats, and I must have some level of synesthesia between music and colours and shapes cause it’s way too quiet, way too beautiful of a day, just two more cars on the road, a lady walking her dog and I know it’s bullshit. I know the pitch-black and deserted underground parking is coming and I’m a willing participant of placing myself below six-feet under because I don’t have a choice, so I have to act normal as if it’s my usual Sunday shopping trip. But it’s Tuesday, and it doesn’t make any difference what day it is anymore.
I open my window all the way down for air and it’s even more quiet outside.
My car passes the underground car park barrier, I put my window up again and of course it’s not as dark as I imagined because there are always lights in underground parking lots.
Dumbass.
The place is also not empty as I had anticipated. There are more people today before noon than on my regular weekend outings, and men in their 30s and 40s are getting their shopping bags out of their cars. I’m able to park close to the elevators, get out of my car, get my stuff and head for the trolleys here and not above ground because I’m still not convinced this is OK and I just want to get it over with.
I place my right foot under the trolley that is fixed with the rest in a long single row, and start pulling it towards me as I ever so carefully put the plastic coin-shaped chip into the slot on the right side of the handle so I can release the chain. Success.
I wait for the 30-something-year-old dad, in his pristine quilted sports-vest that he must only wear on his downtime when he is out and about and not in the office, to enter the elevator with his one-bag in his hand. He is standing like a perfect preppy Pinterest mid-season outfit inspo, and when I get home I should paint my nails again like I did last weekend, when I had to cancel T’s big birthday extravaganza. I allowed myself to stay up all night after that day, searching for bridal looks online, “trying on makeup” with my phone and then real makeup based on the what looked good on the makeover app.
I had not been prepared for the absolute gutted feeling that overcame me when I had to individually send all those SMSs to each parent who had RSVP’d their little one’s attendance to our son’s birthday celebration that would take place at the end of March. You could still see the “thank you so much for inviting so and so”, “muchas gracias por la invitación” and “we are delighted to come to T’s birthday J” confirmations from a month ago right above each one of the cancellation messages I sent out. Fuck. If I felt this shitty about aborting a little kid’s birthday party, I can only imagine how much worse off people cancelling their weddings and funerals are getting on. I’m extremely grateful that we had already decided, after last year’s proposal, to not do our wedding this Summer, so we could plan our wedding after we moved into the new apartment (when will that be now?). As best described by the immortal words of Phoebe’s biological mum: “So, however hard it is for you to give up this puppy, it would be like million times harder to give up a child”.
After that bridal-makeover purge, I decided that lilac was not the best shade for my skin tone, so my nails were back to bare and I could not wait for the evening to try on the deep red that I should have gone for from the start. It’s the little things that somehow come out of nowhere for you to concentrate on and keep you sane when the world stops making sense. But no matter what colour I finally wear on our Big Day, I still needed to figure out how to hold onto the big handle of the red shopping trolley with anything but my hands. I should have said fuck it and just worn the kitchen gloves I hesitated on before leaving the house.
Polo Ralph Lauren steps in the elevator and disappears without glancing back. Good boy. I’m relieved to not have to explain myself to an eager to be polite flake that thinks this is not real and offers me to step in first, having to pass just too close to him so I can enter in a hurry, with him forgetting to not join on the ride from -1 to 0. I’m alone again and press my elbows into the trolley’s handle and find stability. Awesome. This is how I’m going to navigate this cart, with my back hunched over and my butt slightly sticking in the air, very sexy. I look at my dried out fingers again and I will definitely go for a red manicure, and also remind myself to check online how much lotion I should reapply to keep my over washed hands from disintegrating.
The elevator doors open again and it’s my turn to enter. The smell of chemical Alpine fresh is aggressive, and I feel my lungs getting cleaned inside out with every inhale. I wonder how many people will develop a fear of crowded/confined spaces once this is over and holy shit I have never seen an elevator look this immaculate.
There is no ping noise like in the movies when I arrive to level 0. A cleaning lady is waiting exactly two-metres away when I step out, ready to get-in-and-out like the awesome ninja warrior that she is, and I make eye contact and smile at her. I mouth a soft and heartfelt “merci!”, but I don’t think she saw me. It has to be terrifying to purposely expose yourself to a tiny space were you don’t know if a person has sneezed or coughed spit particles all over just seconds before you enter. I don’t blame her for pretending we don’t exist.
Now it’s time to make a left turn (easy with the elbows) and go shopping.
And ‘Oh Boy’, what the fuck!
