Stretched Out on the Floor
Balanced between caring too much and not caring at all.
I wrote this essay in July 2024, and in the spirit of my beloved friend Bridget Badore’s substack a feelings letter 💌 I am sharing this here with you now in March 2025. As Bridget puts it, this is what I am processing lately (emotionally & creatively). Here’s a swath of words in my field of memory, an archive from months ago, and while you most likely won’t read much of how I’ve processed the details on this day in March, I believe, I hope, I understand you will be close to touching the feeling in the background.
After all this time I have never quite figured out the art of reading a newspaper. For my Dad this was akin to being gifted in ballet. There was a mesmerizing way in which he could hold the paper open with two hands, balance the pages in the space between a folded knee, and quite suddenly, flip and fold the paper into a new configuration.
My dad is a newspaper and radio kind of man, often listening to sports shows on long drives and reading multiple local newspapers a day. I have memories of him bringing a newspaper inside with him to family gatherings or asking someone to pick one up. I’ve seen him reading the paper— and in this family it is always called “the paper”— in people’s living rooms, in the cab of his truck, on vacations, at his daddy’s house, in a reclining chair. If my dad is coming to your living room for a long visit with any possibility of waiting, a hint of idle time, then you can count on him to be reading. Or at least you could when I knew him best. I have a habit of using the past tense when I speak of my dad or Arkansas and I suppose it’s because I was always there in my youth in ways I no longer am as an adult. I pull the past into my future, examine and write and remember as if it is all gone but I’m aware, and you should be too, that we are both still here doing all of this living albeit apart.
As a kid I didn’t think much of my dad’s paper habit while in the company of family, but looking back on it now, how bold, how brave! This is the language of a man who does not have a single care about the expectations and perceptions of others. Back then, this was a man who wanted to read the paper, to fill the gaps with something of interest, maybe out of boredom or irritation or something else. Family and friends all made conversation with him and he certainly made it back. But how bold to send out a signal, a wave of energy that reads to me now as I hear you, but I am also choosing to do something I care about, need, and enjoy. God, so much of this describes me.
When I think of my dad and the paper, I think about my papaw’s house. There were skoal cans and a wintergreen aroma rising from red solo cups. I think of cold cans of coke and fresh packs of wrigley’s big red. I think of the timed chemical puffs meant for the flies and piles of cigarette butts. I think of the brown carpet and how it always reminds me of hamburger helper. I think about how I have a similar carpet here in my cottage in New York. In my papaw’s house there was a brick fireplace landing that doubled as the stage my sisters and I performed on at gatherings. That house was all wood paneling and tall windows. The door to the main bathroom was missing its handle. I remember how nervous I was to go in there, stuffing a warsh-rag in the gaping hole to try to get some form of privacy. All of the quirks were easy to brush off in the moment because when I went to my papaw’s, I was getting a tall tale, a room full of laughter, the promise of a full belly, and the possibility of an adventure.
When I think about my dad and the paper, I think about holidays with a kitchen island full of sheet-pan cakes, cobblers, and dishes covered with shiny foil. I think of my dad’s birthday and his love of fried peach pies. Back then we were living in a sea of camouflage and denim blue work shirts. Ten-gallon hats and ball caps. I think of the thwack and whoosh of a screen door. There was the warning to all guests to be wary of bringing your dog out to Nathan, specifically Westfall Loop. If you weren’t careful, my papaw would charm your dear pup and turn them into a farm dog, the kind that lives outside, works cattle, and battles snakes in the tall grass.
And I can’t talk about my papaw without mentioning mamaw too. Mamaw was moody, gruff, and tough as nails. She had her hair sprayed to the high heavens and a cigarette perched between painted fingertips. Her makeup was so thick, its powdered scent would stick to you all day from that first hug of hello. If you wanted something to get done, you had Mamaw take care of it. In my memory she was the only person I’ve known to go toe-to-toe with my papaw. She would get tickled as my family likes to say and I remember her big crushed can laugh. Here my past tense habit helps because Papaw and Mamaw left us back in 2020 within eleven days of each other. It’s hard to speak about your childhood, the past and the present, the living and the dead, all while keeping a firm grasp on your reality in the here and now.
After all this time I can suddenly see a large red barn. For years my neighbor across the street has neglected a mysterious property hidden behind trees, flowers, and tangles of wild things. But one day I watch a black limo pull up and a gathered family in formal wear and I have a basic understanding of a story. As the weather warms and I make my way out to my front porch, considering my front yard is a backyard of sorts, I notice the neighbor has cut down all the trees, cleared out every bush, forever changing the view. I talk to the neighbor whose name I learn is Stephan (but not Steven) and he shares how his mom just passed and this residence has history, that the red barn was in fact once a community dance hall. And in this experience of loss there is a mounting excitement in honoring what once was.
When I journal outside, I see Stephan’s barn and I think of Arkansas. I know there are barns everywhere but I can’t help it, my mind always turns back to home. I can’t think about Arkansas without mentioning Oklahoma. There are years of me wrestling with what home is because I grew up between two spaces, two people, two worlds. I always want home to be Tulsa, but my roots are buried deep in the soil of southwest Arkansas next to my grandmama and my papaw and mamaw and their parents too.
I’m back to thinking about my dad and how he was always stretched out on the floor. He liked to watch tv or read sprawled out on the floor with a pillow folded and tucked beneath his head. For reasons I can’t explain, it seems like he’s been laying on the floor his entire life. There’s the floor of the duplex in Fayetteville where I took all my firsts and the floor of the house in Elkins where we spent all of our lasts. There’s the creek bed and his daddy’s place and his papaw’s, the trailer in Murfreesboro. He’s all white cotton socks and knobby knees and a soft gaze.
There’s an odd feeling of not knowing how much is too little when it comes to connection. I recently talk to my dad on the phone about our shared terrible eyes. I could tell by his tone that he was calling with bad news. I see it now, the future of me coming back home only in the passings and the births. I don’t know how to keep it any other way. It’s strange how having zero expectations actually creates room for so much more. I haven’t figured out how to widen that in my other relationships, in my life, in my home. To be honest, I find myself balanced between caring too much and not caring at all.
When I write “stretched out on the floor” I spend an inordinate amount of time comparing the proper form of stretching out against what’s natural to me. Is it “on” or “in” the floor? Which one is right to your ear and which one is fluid with my tongue? When I write “stretched out on the floor” I am referring to my dad’s once lanky frame and how it takes up space in the many living rooms of my early memories. But it is Angel Olsen’s poetic version that floats to the front of my mind as an offering from my ear to yours:
After all this time I discover my own version of reading the paper. I unfold and spread the sheets out on a flat surface. I scour every headline in search of something true. There’s the smell and the feeling of the ink between my fingertips. The way the photos are dulled and smudged in the paper crease. Poised above with a keen eye and a small pair of scissors, I am ready to excise my own form of poetry, to stretch myself out on the floor.
With love and possibility,
Jordan