Entry 2: Greenhouse Girl

7/15/2025

NOTES FROM THE BALCONY, ENTRY #2
It starts, as these things often do, with a little green.

Not the greenhouse — not yet.
First, the green I roll between my fingers. The slow ritual: grind, pinch, tuck, flip, lick, twist. I sit by the window. It’s warm already at 4am, quiet. Flick, spark. Inhale. I am trying to calm my nerves as my son's father texts me a novel, reminding me what a horrible mother I am (in case I had forgotten). Telling me I am a lunatic, maniac, psycho bitch, crazy, hallucinating, paranoid. Telling me I am nothing but a problem, and this is why my parents don't want me. I try to keep my stomach from flying up into my throat. And as the smoke curls, memory unfurls — like a vine from the past, creeping up through my chest and blooming behind my watery eyes.

I close them.

The taste is earthy and sweet, floral edge, and as I exhale, there it is:

The greenhouse.

Checkered vinyl floors, black and white, each square a whole world — a lava-hot vinyl universe that stuck to our feet in summer as we played pretend hopscotch across them. The air heavy with humidity and the smell of my grandma's chicken soup cooking no matter what time of year. Safety. Plastic siding ticking in the wind. The flutter of bees just beyond the mesh screens. A dog barking somewhere in a neighbor's yard. And always — always — a candle burning, even in daylight.

I remember the day it was installed. Trim was being tapped into place by a Hungarian man on a ladder, his voice thick with accent and stories I was too young to understand. His family had fled Europe during WWII and later his two sisters became my grandmother’s friends, all because my mother knew one of their daughters in high school. My sisters and I were friends with their grandkids when we were growing up. This greenhouse represented generations braided through escape, kitchen gossip, and quiet acts of survival. I didn’t know all that then. I only knew our family friends were there to help because my grandparents were immigrants too and they understood each other. I fixated on the smell of fresh glue, sound of hammer to nail, and the thrill of something new. It was all so simple.

In that greenhouse we watched Shark Week on a glowing mini TV the size of a lunchbox. We played Nintendo, the old kind with the cartridges you had to blow into. Mid-summer meant Wimbledon was on in the background. I thought the players moved like magic. I studied them, and I played too. In the midst of all that, there I was, always drawing something at the table. It was a glass table with plants on top. I can still recreate the very texture of it in my mind's eye. I can remember days when it would thunderstorm and my sisters and I would build a fort underneath it, confusing the pattering of rain on the rooftop with the sound of cherries dropping from the giant tree above. The combination of smells, the laughter, cozy blankets and whispered fantasies of what the future might hold eventually gave way to CLAP thunder FLASH lightning -Another text comes in- “...If Careless was a person” (in reference to me). I run to the bathroom, I am shitting out my whole nervous system again today, like every day. I beg to go back to where I was. I search for comfort in my television playing Netflix, in my daughter's soft snore, in my computer screen as I write this.

At night, we opened every window and watched the fireflies bump against the outside of the screens while we traded stories, dreams, anything. Granny and I were side by side on faded lounge chairs, the kind with plastic straps, canvas cushions, and rusted aluminum frames. We’d talk until the candle burned down. Sometimes we didn’t talk at all. Just watched shadows move across the glass, feeling safe in our own tiny pocket of time.

She’s still alive, but gave up that house I grew up in last summer. She lives with my parents now, and I’m... not involved with them. My parents are another onion to peel entirely, so let's focus on Granny for now...wait...I'm losing her. The memory fades after my parents enter my psyche. The charm is over. My phone sits silent but I'm bracing for the next text.

I take another hit. The smoke is softer now, sweet and blue. In the curl of it, the checkerboard glistens again. I can almost hear the floor under my feet, the buzz of fireflies against the screen, the weight of my grandmother’s silence beside me. The smell of lilacs outside and chicken soup inside...and of candles, always. I used to tell her that her arms were so soft, like the dough she used to make bread. The smell of the yeast, and me watching it rise...lifting the paper towel to check on our big lump of beautiful dough. Good even uncooked. Sneaking a pinch. She never needed to say much, but gave me space to exist and really listened. And now I'm back.

I’m not sure why I stopped remembering, but I know I'm protecting myself from something (or trying to).
Maybe memory, like art, needs heat and pressure. Is that true?
My friend Josh told me once that diamonds are made under pressure, and so are all the best things. Especially by me. He wasn't wrong (much love, bro), but what I wanted to cry out was that I am tired of making art through my trauma. There has not been one single project that I had the opportunity to complete without some secret personal crisis going on in the background. Not one. Imagine what I will create when all the pressure is finally lifted?

Maybe I’ll never stop creating under pressure. Maybe that’s just the kiln I was given in this lifetime. But I’d still like to know what it feels like to shape something in peace. To make beauty without bargaining with pain. Until then, I keep a flame lit. Even if it's at my lips rather than a candle on my Granny's table. Even now, in this very moment. Especially now. And if you have made it this far into this dispatch from the Balcony (of my Heart) I thank you for your attention, and I wish you go in peace at this interlude. Tomorrow, I'll be back to share screenspace with you (let's live a little together, in this glow). xx