Talking on Residual Air

I am turning into my Grammie. I know it’s cliché, to say you’re turning into one of your matriarchs. It is a well-traveled trope. However, it is a true one. She always used to say things three times in a row, and now I'm starting to do it too. It stemmed (and stems) from low-level anxiety, a need to know that you are actually being heard, above the din. She always moved fast, in everything she did, muttering in triplicate, "I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming," or “I heard you, I heard you, I heard you,” or “I got this, I got this, I got this.”

Another thing she used to do was, she used to talk on her residual air. Like, she'd talk to the end of her breath and instead of taking the time for a new breath, she'd just keep talking, because she always did things fast, and in threes. She would talk to the end of her breath, and then her voice would take on this weird quality, because she didn't have enough breath support to push through to her final thought. I am noticing that I do this too now, as I'm moving in this stage of life where I'm so busy and multitasking so much and I'm hollering out to one of the kids or my husband about one thing or another, and I realize I sound just like my Grammie... that same sort of pushing, forced sound, as I work to get out the last phrase, or word, on that last burst of air, without even stopping long enough to take another breath.

Everyone is in the car, waiting for me, and I still have to pack the baby’s bag, and grab the jackets, and the sunscreen, and the snack bag, “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.” My husband calls to me for the third time, asking for the wi-fi password, and I’m in the middle of this or that, and his voice is taking on the tone of irritation, and I holler down, “I heard you, I heard you, I heard you.”

It's always in there, that last puff. It's the principle upon which the Heimlich maneuver is based; the forcing out of that last vestige of pressure to dislodge lethal bits of tracheal blockage. I also know that even when you die, a small amount of oxygen remains in the alveoli of the lungs, and (as gruesome as it sounds) that if you bend dead people's bodies at the waist, and sit them upright, the force of the motion on the abdomen, and on the diaphragm, will force that last puff out. It is enough to freak you out, this notion that even after death, we can still make voice. For shizzle.

I was thinking about all this as I was hollering something or other up the stairs the other day, in my Grammie-voice, and all my reserves were shot. I was sleep-deprived, and short-tempered, and SO tired I didn't think I was going to be able to make it to bedtime, with all the millions of tasks to slog through between now and then... KNEW I couldn't do it. KNEW I was spent. KNEW there was nothing left, no energy. An empty vessel.

And then I remembered the residual air.

Sucking it up, I gave myself a sort of a psychic Heimlich maneuver, pushing with all my will as the last reserves underlying my deflated near-death spirit forced their way out, and buoyed me on, pushing me forward. Not ideal, I know, but it got me to bedtime.

Talking on residual air, working through the final push until bedtime. Get up. Breathe deep. Repeat three times... repeat three times.... repeat three times. I got this.