To Waiting It Out

They come more frequently now, the days when I feel I can wait anything out. I’m getting closer and closer to having the proverbial patience of a saint.

I can wait for Christmas and vacations. I can wait for new movies to come out. I can wait for my favorite band to come to play at a venue close enough to drive to and small enough to enjoy. I can wait for my birthday. I wait for phone calls and emails, even good news.

My waiting is not filled with anticipation or worry that makes me feel the blood run up and down my arms. I don’t have to distract myself from waiting; I don’t busy myself with tasks of minor consequence. I eat my granola, read the news, grade papers, as if it were a day of not waiting.

Waiting used to be painful. Waiting to be Old Enough for whatever it is was I wanted to do or be--ride my bike to school, go on a date, have a job, fly by myself--was torture, as if someone had taken the hours and minutes of the days and stretched them as thin as they could be but still they held me. Nothing I could do made that day come faster. No wishing made it so.

Maybe I don’t yearn the way I used to. Maybe my soul doesn’t cry out the way it did when I was 8, 15, 23. Maybe after almost 50 years, it’s pretty clear that not much is exciting.

No. In fact, if anything, the yearning is deeper: for a meaningful life, to impact, for justice and fairness. I yearn to be a force for good, to connect, to be honest and real. I wait for moments every day when I can be or do or witness these things. So my improved patience is not for lack of waiting.

Practice. Maybe it’s teaching and the parade of excuses for not doing work that have trained me to simply nod. I cannot react no matter who has died or seem to have died. No matter the string of bad luck: the broken down car, the lost ID, the rain, the wallet stolen, I say not one word.

Maybe it’s winters and learning to stay inside for days in a row. I’ve learned not to look out the windows and if I do, I’ve learned not to look at the snow. I read. I cook. I do anything but wait.

But maybe it’s years of coming to the end of waiting. Finally I am old enough to ride my bike to school. The day arrives and I get on my bike and ride--the cool March morning, the thrill of no one knowing exactly where I am at this moment. But it ends--at school, where this is social studies, nuns in habits and a friend who doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. Or I go on the date and it’s awkward, the food is bad and clearly dates are nothing like the movies. Or I get the job and first night on the job I drop a tray of ice cream sundae glasses on the tile floor on a busy Friday night.  I waited for this? The broken bits shine around me; I stand still and usher people around it. Be careful, I say, broken glass here. Broken, this is all broken.

To Chillin Out

Chillin out is not hanging out; it’s not even hangin out. Hangin out usually involves other people, but the beauty of chillin is that it can be a social or solitary event. 

If you are chillin with others, you may not have planned it, but suddenly you realize you are in the company of someone who is also chill, and so you are chillin together. Say, waiting in line for the opening of a movie the whole nation has been anticipating. Spiderman. The line is out the door, down the block and around the corner. The theater has devoted 7 screens, so you aren’t worried. 

You don’t mind seeing movies alone; in fact, you prefer it. Sit wherever. When you go to dip your hand in the popcorn, you don’t bump another hand, which, for a second, jolts you out of the story experience and reminds you where you are. Movies alone are best, especially the first time.

The woman behind you reminds you of someone. Unlike everyone else in line, who is either talking to the person they came with or is looking at their phone, she’s doing neither. You can’t tell if the woman next to her is with her. The other woman is scrolling through something on her phone, her finger flicking up up up. The woman who reminds you of someone is watching the traffic pass, checking out the other people in line. You catch her eye and she smiles lightly. Nods. You nod. Then smile.

Several seconds go by.

“I hope this doesn’t sell out,” you say.

She raises her eyebrows to let you know she hears you. But she’s not gonna answer. She’s chillin. You can talk and chill, but you don’t have to. You know this, and because you are chill, you don’t mind. If you wanted to hang out, you’d have to talk. The folks around you are hangin.

Chill is being, not doing. Chill is accepting, not judging. Chill is letting the world run through your fingers, rough, then smooth, cool, then burning. You keep your fingers open and feel it all.

To The Spring Birds Chirping Loudly at 4:30 AM

By David Mitchell (_MG_8891-80.jpg)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],

I don’t disagree with you. Winter this year was brutal and forced us all into smaller and smaller spaces, not just in our homes, but in our minds. Several days in a row the sun was just a suggestion of light in the day, and we checked our weather apps constantly to see if it would get above 9 degrees. No luck. Our mantra was, “It doesn’t last.”

Now, in April, you have either returned from your winter stay in the south or you have freed yourself from the icy chains, and you are busy every morning screaming about it. You flit around so furiously in the arbor vitae that it appears to be shaking, though there is no wind. You face east and chirp chirp chirp as the sun rises cold through the trees.

Call it a prayer. Call it a song. Call it an instinct, an impulse. Call it a need. Call it a responsibility. Call it a chorus, one voice out of many. Call it an architecture of sound in which we break open the morning. Call it now. Call it here. Call it romantic. Call it crazy.

I fear you are going to hurt yourselves, the way you crackle and squawk. I fear you will exhaust yourselves while the ground is still winter-solid and the worms are deep in the earth.

Let’s not pray this hard. Let’s not sing this loudly. Let’s not shake the trees by its smallest branches in celebration just yet. Let’s allow the morning light to melt onto us. Let’s sleep the sleep of the warm and comforted.

I say this every year. You never hear me.

To Sandalwood

You are the fragrance of my first dreams, the ones I dreamed before I had images or language or a person to love. The dreams we can’t understand once we have all these things, but dreams we recognize instantly as our own.

You are the fragrance of appetites, not just the ones that draw us to the table and make the tomatoes seem to define red, the onions define sweet, the salt define earth. You are also the appetites that draw us to open books, to run our hand down our beloved’s back, to walk deep into the woods even though the sun is setting.

You are the fragrance of underneath. Underneath the breath. Underneath the words. Underneath our tongues when we lie. The beauty underneath the lie. The fragrance underneath the moon. The longing underneath the moon and the fragrance underneath the longing. She gets up and walks away; you’re the fragrance underneath her reason why. She never leaves, really.

You are the tensions that hold us, the fears we live between and love. Knowing and not knowing. Loving and not loving. Being and not being. We would be nothing without them. 

Sandalwood tree in bloom

To Lies

Babies lie. On the plane, I watch a baby boy fall asleep in his father’s arms, and when it’s time to get off, the father has to put him down in the seat by himself to grab a bag from overhead. The baby cries as if the seat is hot and the father, as fast as he can, picks the baby up again. Immediately, the baby stops. He has to put the baby down again and again the baby cries, screams even; this is not a whimper or request; it’s a demand. As soon as he picks him up again, the baby is quiet. A liar, but quiet.

Whit is an only child and I thought that I would never encounter certain lies. Growing up, when a glass broke or the back door was left open during the summer so that we were “air conditioning the whole outside,” I could blame a brother or sister or just say I didn’t know and the blame could be, at least momentarily, reasonably shifted. Whit doesn’t have that luxury, and yet, still: Who ate the last of the chocolate chips? I didn’t. Who tracked snow all over the carpet? Not me. Who left the radio on in your room all day? No idea. Even when I say, “Go clean up the mess you left in the kitchen” without a question at all about guilt, he will say, “It isn’t mine.” Dead serious. I think he believes it.

By the time they are teenagers, kids lie in 1 out of 5 interactions with their parents. We lie more in person than in email. Men lie more about themselves and women lie more to protect others. I hear a story of a man who was raised to be honest about everything and as an adult, he has to teach himself to lie. To do this, he reads an etiquette book, which he says has one message: lie. Lie when you don’t know someone’s name. Lie when someone asks you how you are. Lie when you don’t want to join them for dinner.

Liars understand they are being asked to lie. The lie is created as much by the person being lied to as the liar. We want to believe. The baby cries and the father responds because the truth here is the baby just wants to be held and the father just wants to hold him. Our parents ask us if we did this terrible thing and we say no because the truth is we want them to love us and the truth is parents are sometimes not sure what unconditional love is.

Maybe lying is really telling the truth we don’t realize we know yet.

To That Last Cold Day in Spring When I Should Wear My Winter Jacket But I Refuse Because I Can’t Stand The Damn Thing Anymore

It’s the last day of March, 4:30 in the afternoon and finally, I have time to walk the dog. I stand at the coat rack and have to decide: parka or light jacket?

The winter coat rack

The day before, this time in the afternoon, it was 53 degrees and sunny. I didn’t even have to be outside to know it was warm. I was in my office and students come in, smiling, and I swear I can smell the sunshine on them. They look uplifted and though we call it small talk, we really want to comment on what a nice day it is. “Can you believe it?!” we ask. No, no we really can’t.

Not after this winter, not the coldest on record, but the coldest in the memory of any living person. The kind of winter that sucks out your marrow. It mocked us, bullied us, dared us. Schools closed again and again. We gave up feeling brave and bold; even the most hearty among us admitted this was going too far.

So as I ticked the March days off and they slowly, almost imperceptibly, warmed, I began to remember Oh, yes, this is what it’s like to not flinch when I open the door, to breathe and not feel it, to just walk without watching every step. It’s like I’m just here, without concern.

On this last day, the temperatures plummet. Twenty degrees this morning with snow a possibility. Indy sits on the living room floor and cries to go for a walk, so I must. I hesitate, staring at the coats. I grab the jacket. I know it’s not true, but I believe in a religious way, that if I put my winter coat back on, winter will think it can stay forever.

Ohio would hate me.

To The Phone Conversation The Haitian Taxi Driver Was Having, Which I Transcribed With My Best French and To Which I Have Ascribed My Own Meaning

By Ad Meskens (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

To Embroidered Linens

You used to be plain, unloved even, but she saw the potential. Right there, in the corner, she will sew a small flower with teeny tiny stitches. You will not recognize yourself when she is done.

First, the dark red petals, box shaped, six x’s smaller than a grain of rice. Below that, the light pink, which means she had to get out another needle; embroidery doesn’t allow the sewer to get into a groove the way knitting or crochet does. This has no flow. Nevermind that this bloom has no counterpart in nature; everyone will see it as flower. Thread and needle change again and she adds the light green stems. And one final touch: unconnected to the stem or the petals, but close, a single sky-blue “x”, the smallest of all the stitches. That one is the artistry. Is it a butterfly? A bit of sky? A wayward petal of nearby violet? Perhaps she would say, it’s color, it’s accent, it’s depth.

She repeats this on 20 napkins and then tucks them in the buffet cabinet. She brings them out at lunch on Saturday and always for dinner. Beauty for everyday use. Her children think little of them, not even realizing that when they were babies, falling asleep after a full summer day, she was in the next room, head bent, sewing. She loved the way it kept the room quiet. She loved the order.

It’s been years since she sewed these; the kids have moved. When she dies, an estate sale company comes in and helps them sort and sell. You are folded and taped together. Labeled $1. Not because you are worth merely a dollar, but because they are forced to quantify the unquantifiable and a dollar seems as likely as any other price.

My friend discovers you and cannot believe her good luck. These? A dollar? She knows the labor involved; she understands raising kids and the chaos that runs through a day. She is a great lover of the small and unappreciated. Fate has clearly matched you two.

We are at her house, 7 of us. Friday and we’ve all gotten off work, dashed home, said hello and goodbye to our families and headed over. She places you on the counter and we are all rapt by the enormous delicateness. We are suddenly not alone, not simply this small group of friends. We are a part of a larger history, sewn in small flowers in all the linens in all our closets.

To Pavlov’s Dog

Every morning is cold in St. Petersburg, but still he arrives early. You hear the door to the lab unlocking and you know who it is. You could smell him coming down the hall. He has nothing for you and you don’t even lift your head. You don’t know this breaks his heart. He rubs behind your ear and you stretch out and barely, just barely, open your eyes. He wants you to love him. You are waiting for someone else.

Pavlov has left his wife at home, again. He does this every day, but today, he should have stayed. Three days ago they buried their first son and she has not left the bed. He feels helpless. Forgotten. She is more beautiful than ever, he thinks, but he has thought that every day since their wedding. He grieves his son’s death by doing a lot. He writes down ideas for experiments all night. He goes for long walks. For him, the pain is dulled by the distraction. She is letting it burn itself out and she will be the wick at its core.

You sense Ivan is different, but not enough. Every day he is empty handed. But you know what is coming and in a few minutes, you hear the other footsteps, the assistant, heading towards the lab. You sit up. You hear the door open; your turn your ears up. Your mouth waters. My love! You can hardly contain yourself.

Pavlov notices, of course, He notices everything. He will win the Nobel Prize for his powers of observation. The boy was sick, but it took days before they realized it. His eyes were a little glassy. His breath a little hot, but they never thought about it. The doctor told them there was nothing they could do, nothing they could have done. Pavlov hears that but doubts it. Always something, there must always be something to do.

Ivan Pavlov

In the lab that morning, patience stretches thin, translucent, between you and the assistant, between the assistant and Pavlov, between Pavlov and you. Like looking through a microscope, each focusing so intently on one thing. The assistant is looking at Pavlov’s ears, how every few seconds they pull back as if he is clenching his jaw. You are watching the assistant’s hands, all the same motions he does every day before he comes to you with a small nibble of dried chicken.

Pavlov is watching your mouth. You’re licking your lips like you know what’s coming. He can see your anticipation. We love the predictable. We crave it. We see it coming and we cannot help but respond. I remember that feeling, he thinks. I remember that.

To Exquisite Specificity

Cancer treatment in the 1970’s was brutal. The War on Cancer had just begun and doctors were in a race to defeat it, to overcome it, to eliminate it. They knew enough to be dangerous.

Normal Cells

I want to believe doctors are driven by science, not metaphor, that they would never let that more human side of them overtake the more rational side. I want to believe they weigh all their decisions on the scales of what they know to be effective, that they never make assumptions because they have a story in mind about what’s possible.

I listen to the doctor tell the story of a woman with a 30% chance of survival. The key, he says, is getting her to trust him. He’s honest and confident and so she agrees to a painful, toxic course of treatment. She’s still alive today, he says.

But if she had a 70% chance of dying, even with this chemo, was the key her trust in the doctor? Wasn’t it whatever freak of nature that happened that tipped those odds to her favor? Without the treatment, she would have died, but with it, her chances were only slightly better. Weird, not-yet-defined chemistry saved her. Not trust. Not confidence.

Cancer cells. Note how they are more crab-like. Hence the name.

We know so much more know, the doctor says, we have drugs with exquisite specificity. Unlike the old drugs, that killed all the cells indiscriminately, these drugs seek out, attach themselves to, and kill just the cancer cells.

Why are we continually surprised by the need to be specific and by our ability to figure out how to be specific? Generalizations have never cured anything: not disease or hunger or poverty or ignorance. Every problem needs a solution with exquisite specificity.

To Never Having Enough Time

What would having enough time look like? Would it be sitting in my little armless chair, fresh book in hand, the dog sleeping in the corner, not because she is bored but because she has just come in from our long walk in the cold spring afternoon?

Having enough time would not look any different than not having enough time. Me in the chair with the book and the sleeping dog--that happens almost daily.

No, having enough time feels different. Me, sitting in my little armless chair, fresh book in hand, not thinking about what comes next, the papers that need grading or the conversation I need to have with my son about his plans for the future.

Having enough time means I would not have to chose. Having enough time means I’ve accurately judged how long each of these will take, along with making dinner and doing the bills, and fit them nicely into the square hours that are this afternoon and they fit together like puzzle pieces. Snap, snap, snap.

Time may be infinite, but my time is not. Not my mortality, just my day. Every day, I have to pick what gets done (the bills, the grading, a run) and what does not (painting the bathroom, dusting, that conversation with my son), the constant sorting and rearranging of the to-do’s. Always something leftover.

My To-Do List

But that’s why I get up the next day. This morning, I have to write this letter. I have a student who wanted to meet yesterday, but we agreed on today. I want to go to lunch with a friend. I will make chicken for dinner. So I get up, despite the fact I was dreaming about chocolate cake with caramel icing. Despite the fact I have a significant portion of this day that scares me. Despite the fact that there are people I want to see today but can’t because they live far away or have died. I get up.

I never want enough hours in the day. I always want at least one thing left undone. Even on the day I die, I want to say, “Please, I’m not finished, just 5 more minutes.”

To Tattoo Artists

You’re bold to pick human beings as your canvas. You will hurt them for your art, though they come to you willingly. And, most of the time, when it’s over, you will never see the art in its original state again.

If your client is drunk, you have to turn him away. If she’s high, you have to turn her away. If he says to you he wants his ex’s name on the back of his hand, you will try to talk him out of it. She’s 19, totally sober, and she wants a Jonas Brothers tattoo on her calf, because they give her strength to walk around in the world, and you try, you really do, to say some where else, something else. She insists. This, too, is your legacy.

Sometimes they come because they have heard you are gifted and just want one of yours. Most have an idea--Bible quote, yin/yang, the last words Mom said to them before she died--but not what it will look like exactly.

By THOR (originally posted to Flickr as Nicks Gun)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 But some come with the image completely crafted--the Cleveland skyline, a Celtic knot, this sunflower from Van Gogh, two small initials. These have very specific meanings and you can see the hurt or the longing or the love as they show you what they want. They always want it somewhere they can see it, somewhere someone else will see it and ask.

The art here is not your own--yet. The artistry comes from the way you remove yourself as you paint. Your tendency is a more curved line, but this one is straight. You prefer color, but this is just an outline. You prefer the fine details at the edges, but this has no flourish, no asides to catch the eye. With every prick of the needle, you have to become a different artist, one who paints like this.

Because the sunflower isn’t really a sunflower.

Keith, newborn Whit, Rainer tattoo

An hour into it, the pain thickening, he begins to tell you the story. The baby they called “sonflower”. A year ago. First child. Something to say he is still here, that he is beautiful. But not so perfect. The sunflower of Van Gogh--messy, crowded, shocking. And so, so delicate. Each petal. You ink this into his arm for three hours. He wants it to end. He never wants it to end.

To The Young Professor Who Serenades the Block in the Summer Whether We Want It or Not

I’m grateful that you play acoustic guitar so that your music stays appropriately in the background of whatever we are doing: dinner, reading, catching up after a long day. I’m grateful that you actually play entire songs and not just the first third or just the chorus. A lot of porch and campfire musicians never commit to the whole song, and I always feel cheated. I’m also grateful that you’re not that bad a player or singer. You can carry a tune and I’d bet you would do ok at a local karaoke bar. You’d be the guy people think, “You know, he’s not too bad,” as they snack on pretzels with their beer.

I’m grateful that you know reasonable hours to play, which may come from playing to your young son and also not playing when you might wake him up. I’m grateful you live on adult time, which isn’t true for all adults. I’m grateful to your parents for the music they must have played for you as a child because these are not songs from your high school prom, that’s clear. I’m grateful that you know your limits and do not try to sing as if Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys will come walking down the block one day (as he might very well) and say, “Wait. What’s that? Is that the sound we’ve been missing in our next album?”

I played this ghost.

I was fearless like you once. For a brief time after the school play in which I was cast as the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol, I thought maybe I should go for a life in theater. The Ghost of Christmas Present is typically a very fat, jovial man with a lot of accoutrements like goblets full of wine and turkey legs. I was 5’5” and maybe 102 pounds. I had one, sometimes 2 friends. I never knew why Mrs. Hutchinson cast me and I didn’t want to ask.

I sang a song all about food and eating and indulgence and at the end, the audience clapped. It didn’t occur to me that they were parents and though the clap was sincere, it’s not really a measure of the quality of the performance. Maybe I’m good? I keep singing and practicing. I decide to master “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand. I thought I was good enough to sing both parts.

One afternoon, I decided to take the alleyways to Skillern’s for some candy. I thought maybe there would be a talent agent out in the backyard. I seized the moment and sing loudly as I walk. The agent would hear me and think, “I must find that voice!” When I pass a kid riding his bike, I suddenly feel caught, absurd, humiliated. What was I thinking?

But you? You keep singing. You’re not trying to get on Broadway or even play at a local bar. You just like it and believe you’re halfway decent enough that you aren’t upsetting people. Your son sits with you all morning, playing with his trucks while you pick your way through a new song. He’s your biggest fan.

To Freaking Out

Yesterday, a student emails that she’s late for her conference because she can’t find my office and she’s “freaking out.” I imagine she’s on the floor above me (because most of the time when they are lost, that’s where they are) frantically checking ALL the doors, asking people if they know me. No one on the floor above knows me. She throws her head back, telling herself something like, “You had one thing to do today, Jordan, one thing!”

I email back:  we can reschedule. It’s fine. Don’t worry. Don’t freak out.

Because freaking out is serious. Missing a conference is not. Of course, for your grade it is, but your grade is not serious. Of course, for your degree, it is, but really, your degree is not serious. 

It is.

Babies freak out.
Whit had this expression in most of his baby pics.

But it really isn’t.

There’s a giant Scale of Things That Matter and it works like a produce scale at the grocery store. In some ways, it’s rather inaccurate, meant for estimation only, but it’s reliable enough to give some idea of the size and cost. But, whatever goes on the scale has to meet a particular weight first to even register. One green bean is like nothing. One tomato? Nada. One conference on a rainy Thursday afternoon? Not gonna show up.

But the grade? The degree? No. These are not who you are; they are not even really the things that you do. I want her to get her degree, but I also know that she will. She is 19 years old. Nineteen year olds say things like, “I have waited my whole life for…” and I want to say, “I have been waiting for some things longer than you have been alive. I have blue jeans older than you.” I don’t. She speaks her truth. But if we put in on the Scale of Things That Matter, it has no weight yet.

She could fail my class and, really, be fine; she can recover from failure. She may even be better for it. I may even wish that for her.

Let’s reserve freaking out for those things that we cannot recover from, those moments when we are witnessing our lives change in a matter of seconds. We feel the breath leave us and we aren’t sure if we can breathe again. We wonder how we never considered this would happen and then we wonder if this will happen to everyone. And then we realize it will. We are suddenly so afraid for the whole world. From then on, like it or not, that is who we are. We are the person that knows that truth. We will see it everywhere, every day. When we place it on the scale, the scale breaks. Every time.

To Our Retirement Plan to Buy A Winnebago and Travel All Over the States

Sell the house and buy a Winnebago. Yes, it will mean getting rid of a lot of books, but there are libraries all over the country and really, we don’t need to be weighed down anymore.

Winter in Key West

We will spend winters in south Florida, maybe all the way down to the Keys. Maybe, now that the embargo is lifted, we will hop a boat over to Cuba and listen to live music while we roam the streets in our sandals and straw hats. When we tire of the east coast, we will simply put the thing into drive and head west, through Gulf Shores and Baton Rouge. Maybe we’ll stop near Santa Fe. We’ll head west to the watch the desert bloom in the spring. We will make it to the redwoods by May, the fog just beginning to lift.

Summers up north, maybe even Canada, Victoria with its gardens and high tea. Missoula in July and we will still need our jackets. The Badlands and all the lakes in Minnesota. We follow the Mississippi down to St. Louis for the bar-b-que. Nashville in August because live country music is best in the hottest month of the year. Nashville likes old people. We’ll fit right in.

Of course, we will have to park it. We should sign up to be camp hosts for state parks. We will set up a little patio and hammer a post into the ground that says “Welcome, Friend!” Families pull in with tents strapped to the top of the car. They want to know the best place to fish, where the sandy beach is.

Living the dream of Camp Host
https://www.flickr.com/photos/punktoad/7293049184/

We will lie to them every time. At a park near Little Rock, we will make up stories about 10-pound bass caught every day last week. In Maine, we will tell them the nuclear reactor spilled 3 years ago and none of the water is safe. I can see you doing this, beautiful husband of mine. You can never resist. You have been making up stories our whole life and finally, I get it. When the sun goes down, we turn on the small twinkle lights above our lawn chairs. We will leave before they realize nothing we said is true. We will become legends in the park system. Who needs books when we will live the stories in them?

To the Pictures of Me in Strangers' Houses

I am probably not on the mantle--those are the formal pictures, weddings, graduations, paid portraits. I’m probably not hanging in the hallway with the grade school 8 x 10’s and the last picture of your grandmother.

Who's the guy behind my son?

Maybe on the fridge, the side of the fridge, covered by a flyer from school. A picture of your son and his friend at the pool two summers ago. That’s me, in the background, in the blue swimsuit.

Maybe in a box at the top of the hall closet. I’m here with your great Aunt Lena, who taught school for 43 years. When you visit her, she takes you on historic tours of the town, giving you history lessons she thinks you need and love. You take a picture of her on the front steps of the court house. That’s me, in the red shorts to the right. I’m 7. I have no idea what I’m doing at the courthouse.

My brother and I, but who are the women?

Maybe I just come up on your laptop screensaver, when you uploaded all your pictures off your camera, finally out of space. The 4th of July party, the day at the farmer’s market, the lawn seats for the Dave Matthews concert at Blossom. You are younger than I and live a whole different life. That’s me, sitting on the quilt at the concert. Everyone else is standing. Two seconds after you took that shot, I stand up, though I think the music is too loud.

How many pictures of ourselves are in strangers’ houses? We stand behind cousins, now dead, unaware someone is taking the shot. Or we try to move out of the frame but it’s too late. We are stacked in between the birth of the second and third child. We are cropped out for scrapbooks.

Maybe we end up in flea markets, a box marked “5 for $1”. Old photographs. The day at the Statue of Liberty. Four generations standing in front. A guy wonders what the story was here, who these people are. He buys it, takes it to his study in his home in Enid, Oklahoma. He writes the story and gets all the details wrong. Except the color of my dress, the way my mother holds her hand on my shoulder.

To the Resort Musician

Tuesday night on the beach and the guitar player shows up with a basket of tambourines and triangles. Resort guests start to gather and parents push their kids to towards him, “Tell him you want to play.” He smiles big and invites them in, “I’m gonna need a lot of help!” and the kids take instruments and begin to dance a little.

He looks like he’s in his mid-50’s: a bit of grey and a few wrinkles. He’s wearing a short sleeve button down shirt and shorts. And glasses strapped to his head, in case he gets carried away in the revelry, I suppose. He sets up a small amp next to the hot tub and begins to warm up, a few strums of Van Morrison, a chorus of James Taylor, a couple bars of Jimmy Buffet and he’s good to go.

We wander down the beach until we can’t hear him anymore. The night air has a hint of cool that I can feel just below the warm. It’s in the breeze off the water. Back home, in Ohio, people are talking about snow. March. Spring. It can mean anything.

As we head back, we start to hear “Sweet Caroline” and he has a tiny crowd dancing. The crowd is small enough and familiar enough that it seems everyone is dancing with everyone else. A dad turns to his son, maybe about 12, and tries to pull him up to dance. The boy refuses but he grins. He wants his dad to keep trying.

This guy had them out off their lounge chairs in minutes.

I watch from the balcony and he plays for hours and the crowd keeps dancing and singing. The sun has gone done and the pool lights shine upwards. He is in the middle of the crowd and they sway around him. I wonder what awaits him at home. Does he dance and play and then head back, his dog greeting him at the door? Does he just turn it off and go to bed? Does he remember the way they all loved him? One more, they beg, please just one more.

To The Fact That All the Clocks in Our Vacation Condo are Wrong

Sunset on the beach: the best clock of all

Malls don’t have clocks. The shop owners don’t want you think about time. Lose yourself here, they say. Ignore your life. Suspend not your disbelief, but your belief that you need to be anywhere else. Try on one more dress. Lay down on a Sleep Number bed and try out all the settings. You deserve it.

Vacation should be the same, no? No schedules, no rules. Dinner is whenever and you get out of bed whenever you are done sleeping. So when we walked in to the condo and saw a large digital clock first thing, I was surprised. And it was wrong by an hour and 3 minutes.

In fact, all 4 clocks are wrong--and wrong in different directions. Some ahead, some behind so that as I move from room to room, I’m wondering, “What time is it really?” and “Did we change time zones coming here?” Why do they have the clocks here at all?

Maybe vacation is not about forgetting the time, but recognizing, as we move about, that time is arbitrary. Maybe it’s 6:27 but then again, maybe it’s 5:42. Does it matter? Would you live your life differently? Stop trying. This hour is like no other.

To The Bullet in my Pants Pocket

I had no idea you were there. At the airport, on my way to my nephew’s wedding, the TSA agent pulls me aside, tells me he has to search my bag. This has happened before. I think he needs to show someone he’s doing his job. Sure, go ahead, I say and turn to me son. He wants a Coke. The agent is checking the bag with an unusual attention to detail, running his hand deep inside the pockets. He has to run it through the x-ray machine again. Now, I begin to worry about making the flight.

He comes back with another agent. They speak in small phrases to each other: “Small”, “Pocket”, “Not sure.”

One turns to me, “Do you own a gun?”

“No.”

And he gives me a look.

He pulls out my jeans and reaches in all the pockets. Finally, in the tiny 5th pocket in the front right hip, he pulls you out. He holds you between two fingers and says, “What is this?”

I think you are a lipstick sample or a piece of candy, but I never think “bullet” until he says it.

I have to explain. I bought the jeans from a thrift store downtown. $3 on sale and they’re barely worn Levi’s. They actually fit and I’ve worn and washed them a couple times already. The bullet isn’t mine; it must have come in the jeans.

Of course, that means the woman who owned the jeans before me tucked you into her pocket, and now I want to know your story. We are in Akron, Ohio and clearly are you meant for a handgun and not a hunting rifle. It doesn’t look like you could do that much damage; you’re quite small.

But why aren’t you in the gun? Was the chamber full and she wanted to have one more with her just case? She walks out and grabs one more bullet on her way out the door. Something scares her, but I’m betting the gun doesn’t make her feel as safe and she thought it would.

Or maybe, you were the last one in when she emptied it out. Maybe she was having a bad day. I’ve had days like that. I imagine she thinks about it. Could go either way and she looks for something to hang on to. In the meantime, she tries to make it just a little bit harder. She takes the bullet out and puts it in her jeans pocket. She needs a new life, she thinks. If this is going to work, she’s going to have to start over. Maybe she will just sell everything and move. Some place sunny. Some place easy. Some place she’s never been where strangers welcome her but don’t ask too many questions.

To the Alley Behind My Childhood Home

Overgrown honeysuckle reached well over the tops of the fences; no one bothering to trim them, letting go as wild as they can. The jasmine spilling across. A yellow and white fury of sweet.

Nora and I take the alley as short cut to our houses, passing by the backs of our neighbors lives. I hear a couple sitting on their back patio talking about their oldest child. I stop to pick honeysuckle, break off the bottom for that tiny drop I catch on my tongue. I can’t tell if I can taste it or if I just think I do. The couple’s voices are rising, though only slightly. I can’t tell if they are happy, if the news is good.

We spend much of our summer days spying on our parents, our older sisters, the neighbors. We walk down the alley as quietly as we can, listening for any conversation. We think we will uncover the secrets everyone is hiding; we are sure there are many and that knowing them will explain whatever the adults don’t want us to know.

We don’t imagine the day we will hear a secret we don’t want to know. We think any secret is a good one and that we will always be able to keep it. We never think we are too young to know such details. We certainly don’t think a secret would ever hurt us. We never suspect there are things we don’t want to know.

We can’t un-hear it. We can’t undo it, can’t go back. But we decide to stop listening. We decide we like being 10 years old and not adults and not privy to all the information. We walk the alley, talking loudly. We vow never to tell. I never do.