Once again, I’m high and feeling some type way on Karva Chauth.
For those not in the know, Karva Chauth is the fasting ceremony that Hindu wives observe on the fourth day of the waning moon for the health and well-being of their husbands. I fasted for Mr. D last year, but then we got into a massive fight, and I took a sip of water before spotting the moon through a colander, and he threw his jar of dried fruit on the ground, and we screamed at each other in the middle of our old neighborhood. Ah, memories!
Anyway, there’s also a chance I turned into a witch earlier this year (I have this theory that a woman becomes a witch on her 33rd birthday because why not), and as a maybe-witch, I figured it might be an auspicious time to do it again–the right way–so I did. I drank a ton of water at 4am, ate an apple at 6, and brushed my teeth at 7:30 (the sun may have technically been out, but it was cloudy). I’ve been without food and water since then, and it’s now 9:45 at night.
The fast itself hasn’t been too agonizing, though resisting Costco samples this afternoon took an immense measure of self-control. But for the most part, it wasn’t too bad. I remember being so miserable last year that Mr. D suggested I smoke a bowl to ease the hunger. I scoffed at the time, assuming I’d just get the munchies, but he said I wouldn’t get hungry right away. He had invited his friend over that night to watch TV, which I found selfish and thoughtless, but when the friend echoed Mr. D’s suggestion, I succumbed, smoked a bowl, and felt immediately better. (Hmm, I guess that really is one of those fucked-up relationship things I do… never listening to Mr. D or giving him the benefit of the doubt.) Anyway, hunger-wise, I didn’t even feel the need to get high tonight, but around 9pm I figured it couldn’t hurt. (Now it’s 9:58, and I’m starving.). For the most part, though, I didn’t mind today. And we didn’t even spend much of it together.
Which I thought about honestly tonight. Before I smoked. I asked myself if I was mad about the day. We had split up grocery shopping errands–he had a Shop Rite coupon in his name, so I went to Costco, despite the tantalizing temptations I knew I would face. Afterwards, he watched the Eagles game at a friend’s house while I took the kids shopping for Halloween costumes. Later in the day, an old friend came by with her adorable 18-month-old daughter (who I met for the first time tonight). Then I cooked a chicken stir-fry meal that nobody enjoyed. Mr. D was absent for most of the day, but it was okay, or maybe it was less than okay, but I decided it was not worth fighting about.
After smoking, Mr. D and I retreated to the couch to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm while waiting for the moon, but we still had an hour to go. As Mr. D was scrolling through alternate TV options, I suggested we look for Edward Scissorhands on the Firestick. (I have this vague memory of watching it when I was about 7 or 8. We were in Long Island, or maybe it was New Jersey, and just as I was getting into the plot, my parents decided to leave. Anyway, I’ve never seen the film all the way through and figured tonight was as good as any to watch it.)
Mr. D began searching for it, pronouncing it phonetically. “Edward Skizz-or-hand,” he said. “E-R or O-R,” he asked, while typing the title into the search bar.
“O-R?” I guessed.
“Why are you scoffing,” he asked.
“I’m not scoffing,” I replied. “I was actually wondering if Scissor was spelled with Z’s.”
He laughed and said no, it absolutely isn’t.
He typed Edward Scissorhands, but nothing showed up, and I began to wonder if it was spelled right. “Try it with an -er,” I said. “And maybe I’m not wrong about the Z. Check your phone.”
He tossed it to me, though he needn’t have. It was spelled correctly, and it was unavailable.
“Yeah, that seems to happen with everything I want to watch,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to watch Soul Food, but it’s impossible to find. Just try it and see.”
He typed it in, and it worked.
“Ooh!” I squealed.
“We’re not watching this for real,” he said.
“I’m on a 16-hour fast for your health. You can’t let me pick the show we’re going to watch as we wait for another show?”
Mr. D made some funny remark that I can’t remember now, and then the credits rolled, and I started singing Boyz II Men. “No one else can be what you have been to me, you will always be.”
“You will always be the joy in my life,” he sang back.
I was so happy in that moment, elated by the movie and its soundtrack, transported back to high school, to the earliest days of my friendship with Mr. D, when he interrupted my reverie to ask if he could look for Edward Scissorhands again. “You wanted to watch that more than this, right?”
Then I got pissed and tears ensued. Now I’m writing, and it’s 10:41, and it’s still too cloudy to see the moon. But I’m actually not as hungry as I was before, and come to think of it, I’m somehow not as angry as I was before, either.
