To My Own Time Zone

Because it’s night now, but not dark, and because I would like to go to bed sooner rather than later and it will still not be be dark, I have found it necessary to invent my own time zone: Standard Chelle Time.

The sun is always just about to crest over the horizon every morning, regardless of what time we wake up. And it takes two hours longer than regular time, the orange spilling recklessly over the streets and trees. These mornings always have enough time for the news and breakfast and a shower. Maybe a little more coffee. A little Joan Didion or some Carole King.

Traffic exists but without the pressure; everyone will be where they need to be at the exact moment they need to be there, and they know it. Everyone waves. Several meetings are scheduled and then, graciously, cancelled. In SCT, we have pockets of free time.

We use this time wisely by going to the park without our phones. Some of us will get high and listen to Bob Dylan, but others stay sober without judgement. We have no time for judgement. The ice cream truck shows up and we all have $3.

We get our work done: we balance income sheets and read HR reports. We change our babies’ diapers and we take out our trash. The sun sets just as our eyes feel tired.

And here, I want to turn to my right. Here, now, I want to turn to the people I have loved, people who I can no longer turn to. In my time zone, they are here. But briefly.

They are here without whatever pain they endured in their last minutes on this earth. They are free. They sit for just a moment. They are their most beautiful selves, how I always remember them. They have forgiven me, all the words I never said, the anger in the absence. They travel across so many time zones to get here. They can’t stay long.

They want to see us. We are grateful. We pour lemonade over ice for them. Today, the ice never melts.

To Being in Over Your Head

You’ve been there. Drowning.

You get a call at 4:37 on Tues. You’re in early rush hour traffic teaching your son how to drive. “Brake. Brake now. Brake harder. Harder. Now.” 

The call is for a meeting tomorrow. Just you and some clients from out of town. They just have some questions; they want to know about the process. No particulars. Shouldn’t take long.

Clients from out of town always want particulars. It is, in fact, the reason they come into town. No one spends money on airfare and hotels and cab rides because they have questions about the beautiful generalities of your process.

Oh no. We will drill down.

You walk into the conference room and drown in all the paper, the binders, at least seven, open all over the table like some kind of boudoir for accountants.

Good lord.

You’re handed spreadsheets. Narratives in column form. They are pointing to various numbers here and there asking how, exactly, these numbers were arrived at?

If this was a movie from 1943, you would drag a finger between your collar and your neck. Gulp. Think quickly.

Numbers, you say, are not arrived at. They are not vacations or wedding parties or first dates. The metaphor that equates computation to travel is, you insist, inherently flawed.

They are stunned. Confused. 

Look, you say, I don’t know know where they got these numbers. I know what I asked them, but I don’t know how this answers my question. 

Frankly, I am not supposed to make sense of the answer. I’m in charge of asking the question. Someone else in charge of evaluating answers.

Frankly, you say much more slowly now,  that’s your job. You’re the client, right? What do you think?

You sit back in your conference-room high-backed faux-leather chair. You console yourself with the knowledge that no matter what happens at this table, no one will die because of this decision. 

They stare back. Ask a few more questions but you have found your boat and you are sailing out of here.

You arrive.

Later, you take your son driving. Today’s lesson is parallel parking

To The Kids Denied Talking and Recess

Today we are hanging out in the hall, me and some first graders. Friday afternoon, waiting for the bell.

I’m helping kids with jackets and bags and shoes. He says to me, “Today was a bad day.”

I love to come see the kids on Friday because no matter my week, these few minutes of kid time cheer me up. We talk about Batman versus Spider-Man and how heavy their books are and what their favorite colors are. My favorite colors are always theirs, too. And I’m not lying.

I think he is reading my mind. Today was a bad day. But I can see in his eyes that his day was a bad day in a way that was different from mine. He slumps against the wall.

I ask him why today was a bad day. And then I slump with him.

The other kids were talking. A lot. It was breakfast. The kids were talking. They were loud. 

I think he is about to cry. I bend my head closer to his. We are still slumped.

The teacher said they can’t talk anymore. They can’t have recess anymore.

That’s not fun, I say. That would make me sad. For how many days?

“For all the days,” he says.

All the days. He can’t talk for all of the days.

I tell him that would make me angry. I ask him if he likes to talk. He does. I tell him I do, too. I say I would be sad if someone told me I couldn’t talk anymore. He nods. I tell him I like when we talk. He nods. I tell him I will talk to him next week.

So, young man, we will talk. We will talk about the teachers that tell you not talk. We will talk about our favorite cereals, about why math is fun, why the librarian looks like the teacher in Captain Underpants. We will walk out the door and keep talking. We will talk about fairness and trouble. We will talk about wanting both but always only finding one. We will talk about our mothers, how they don’t take shit from us and because of that, we trust them more than anyone. 

I want to talk with you for years. I want to talk with you when you’re in middle school and trying to walk that line between being independent and wanting everyone’s approval. I want to talk with you when you write that first essay when you take a real risk and it pays off. I want to talk with you when you ask out your first date and get rejected. I want to hear you talk for hours when you try to decide if you can live with your parents anymore and talk with you when you finally have to leave and are terrified.

You will talk. You will talk all the days. You will be at a microphone. And you will be heard.

To The Things We Hear But Cannot See

The snow is thick and wet this morning.  More like November snow than February, which is usually dry and light. No one else is up yet; you’re letting the girls sleep because it’s a snow day, But you don’t have much longer alone. You can hear the pine trees snapping under the winter weight. The smaller, older branches just give in. But you don’t hear them hit the ground. For all you know, they could still be falling.

You are thinking of your grandmother. She called every day after the baby died, though she rarely mentioned the baby. She wanted to know what you were making for dinner. She wanted to know that you were making dinner. She wanted you to know the day will pass. You still can hear saying, “I cain’t believe…” when you tell her how cold it is. She’s looking out her window at the azaleas ready to bloom. Twelve years after she has died, they are still blooming.

You have had seven dreams in the past 13 nights. Three you barely remember. Four of them have been the same. Your house, the house you live in, but you turn the corner and a new room appears, small and crowded, but you love it. You don’t want to tell anyone it’s here and wonder how you didn’t know all these years, the room was here. Someone is calling your name. Someone from one of the other three dreams. They are still calling.

You used to sit in your office and sigh, loudly enough to be heard down the hall. She would walk by; some days she would ask what’s wrong, but other days, because you were like her brother, she would tell you to shut up. Get over it. You’d laugh. You don’t remember any of that. You have shrugged off this rag and bone shop. But she hasn’t. She can hear you, sighing, still.

To the Sadness Brought on by the Grocery Store

I’m picking over winter lettuce at 4 PM on a Sunday when I see the woman with a cart behind me trying to get by. I move my cart over and apologize. Her cart looks like a small car and one child is holding on to the fake steering wheel. Another is walking beside her. 

 

Because this is the front of the store, it’s clear they have just started their shop. The children aren’t happy to be here. They look tortured the way small children do when tasked with adult errands.

The woman says to me, as if she is William Carlos Williams:

You’re ok.

There’s just

so much sadness

brought on

by the grocery store.

And now that she has named it, the sadness is the grocery store.

All the children riding in the carts are singing. Not because they are happy; not lilting, cheery tunes. They all sound a little drunk, or at least tired. The store is filled with toddlers who did not nap today. Moms and dads have finally admitted the truth and need to get on with their lives, so they take the children to the store. They have weighed not having milk and chicken and laundry soap against the chore of shopping with a drunken baby and decided, oddly, it’s better to shop.

The sadness continues. The lettuce is thin. The avocados are hard. We are deep into February and freshness comes at a cost in Ohio.

The floor is muddy. The woman slicing meat at the deli counter is angry. She has been smiling since 10 AM and she is all smiled out. I ask for ham, shaved not sliced, and I know, no matter how she hands it to me, I will just take it and move on.

Lobsters rest at the bottom of a tank that looks like it was built by middle schoolers who decided the science fair was for losers. The steaks on sale are all sold out and the label on the discounted chicken says I should “Buy It ‘N’ Freeze It!” I consider finding the meat manager to suggest they go ahead and spell out the “and.”

When I get home, I will be too tired to cook. We make sandwiches with canned soup. The plates are too big and the bowls are too small.

The sadness. Brought on. By the grocery store.

You're No Number

[This guest post is written by my friend and department colleague, Dr. Scott Randby, who teaches and writes about mathematics.]

I can prove many things about the number e. I can prove e exists. I can't prove anything about you. Did you exist? I can't see it now. I can take my pain and discard it. There is no way to discard e.

e is 2.71828.... and it never changes. What are you? You took the head-on collision with oblivion that is impossible for e. Unless the entirety of reality ends, e will be present and shining. But e isn't God. And the joke played on you---the atheist who admired believers for their ability to believe nonsense---is that the fantasy called God was forced on you at the end. e was there too, but what did you know about that?

I have affection for e. I can trust e to be as it is without reservation. My affection for you was misplaced. My mistake was to create a false friendship. I can't do that with e. e imposes its truth on everything, and its truth cannot be altered by my wishful thinking.

e is a limit. Were you aware of your limits? The chaos you created will soon fade to zero. That is your limit. The limit that makes e is not a trivial zero. We can use e to create beauty and pleasure. With e, we can see beyond our limits. We can see beyond your limit too, but you aren't necessary for that perception.

I understand e. I doubt if I ever understood anything about you, and I know you didn't know e.

I can't reject e, but I can reject you. I can forget your name and everything we ever discussed. Those memories can be wiped away, and they will be someday. Sure, I can forget e, but e will still remain, and remembering e is simply a matter of going through the proofs about it. No proof will ever reconstruct my memories of you, and that is my relief.

To Designated Survivors

I. For the President: You been chosen to survive. The president is giving the State of the Union and all of the very most important will be there. Should our enemy decide to blow up the building, someone needs to be at the ready. Nuclear codes in the briefcase. Security detail. Access codes and the keys to the White House. You’re the one. Not special enough to be required at the speech, but apparently special enough to become the most powerful leader in the world at a time of crisis. You take this as a compliment. Your daughter is so proud.

 II. For the Baby: You have also been chosen to survive. The doctor sits beside you and your partner, hands you your baby. Six weeks old. He is about to die. Five days ago, in a conference room and lots of lab coats, a long wooden table, they started to map out for you what was happening and though they could not confirm the disease precisely, they could confirm it was fatal. The scribbles on the whiteboard make less and less sense the more and more you try. The doctor suggests you have some decisions to make, but really you don’t. Or rather, the decision to have to make is so simple: how and when to survive this.

You have to make a decision. Then, you make it. But you never make peace with it.

III. For Your Partner: Finally, you, too, have been chosen. She says the doctor has good news. She will take a leave from work until she is better. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. Next summer, you'll buy a boat and the kids will learn to sail. You have worked so hard on your life together and now, after decades, it’s starting to pay off. You go to dinner and she looks happy or relieved, if there’s a difference. She does not survive the night and you bury her a week later.

Sometimes the designated survivor has warning, a notice or a note. But then, sometimes, “Tag.” And you’re it. The nuclear option has been deployed. The devastation is complete, but you are the chosen one. You move into this house. People will call you strong. They will say they could never do what you are doing. As if there is a choice. Strength is not the carrying on despite the weight of grief in the midst of chaos. Just the opposite: we endure this sudden weightlessness, the unsettling and violent calm.

To The First Time My Husband Met My Mother

[Thanks so much for reading! This letter marks one year. I will keep writing, but less frequently. Please stay tuned!]

We weren’t dating yet. Just friends. He had somehow gotten past my loud remarks in every class and sometimes, we’d go to lunch before class at the Greek diner. Turkey burgers and milkshakes.

And my mom was coming to visit. A long weekend. I had no idea what we would do. West Lafayette, Indiana is smaller than you’d imagine, if you even thought to try to imagine it. I loved my tiny house and my roommate. My professors. The work I was doing. But you can’t tour that. I had no idea how we would fill up the days.

She comes to campus with me in the morning and I’ve got a class. We are walking to the union and agree to meet up later, and she will join me for the class I teach: Intro to Creative Writing. I walk one way and she walks another. She’ll grab some coffee. People watch.

Keith has seen us talking and knows it must be my mom. When I take leave of her, he waits a bit and then approaches her and gets her attention.

“Te? Te Byrne?”

She recognizes her name, of course, but not this guy. Beard. Pony tail.

Given the rarity of her name, she must know him.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

He keeps it up for a few more seconds and then, he tells her. He saw us. He’s a friend of mine. Just wanted to say hi.

She tells me about it later. He’s so funny. She was trying to figure it out. Who could this be? She was laughing.

We wouldn't start dating for another year. But it starts so small. The way he loves a word. The way he is always up for a hike. The way he made my mom laugh so that, whatever we did the rest of the weekend, she was already having a good time.

To Honesty, Brutal and Otherwise

Little lies are kind. Harmless. I don’t begrudge when someone tells one to me, about me. I’ve said my share: It’s so good to see you. No thanks, I’m not hungry. Of course I remembered!

I’m thinking of the moment when I started to say something this afternoon. And then I stopped. No one was about to be hurt. The question was genuine and she was waiting, patiently.

I’m going to have to say it. And she will not be shocked or hurt or in any way troubled. But I will. 

We all keep secrets, most we don’t even know we are keeping. We’ve never thought to reveal that part of ourselves, not out of shame or fear, but more happenstance. We never had the occasion. Never been asked that question.

We tell so many stories about ourselves, we know what happens we say it. When I say I was born in New Orleans, people find that interesting. We will talk about food and heat and hurricanes, even though I remember none of it. When I say I have a degree in writing, people think I’m checking their grammar. I’m not. They think I love fiction; I don’t. I know how the next few minutes is going to go.

After my first son died and I had my second, people would chat in line at the check-out or in the doctor’s office. “Do you have others?” “Is he your only?”

The first time, I fumbled. I didn’t expect it, didn’t realize that was a question people asked when they saw other people with babies. I said no, I had another; he died. I didn’t know it was a secret. I knew it would be troublesome. I was pretty sure that one of us would cry. Probably me. 

Brutally honest. One of us is about to get hurt. I don’t know how to stop it. You are going to have to forgive me if it’s you.

To Shakespeare and the Things You Got Wrong

William, may I call you William? May I call you Bill?

Bill, you got a lot right. Compared to say, Tennessee Williams or Joan Didon, I can’t deny the depth of your work. Most of us find our thing and run with it. King writes horror fiction. Faulkner steeped in all that south. Langston Hughes, beautiful, necessary, but still no one had the range you did.

But--and we have to be honest here--you got a lot wrong. This is not easy to admit and it’s not meant to overshadow all the truths you revealed, all the heartbreak you endured, all the doubts you suffered to get your work to the public.

I will take issue with only a few:

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I realize that business schools with advanced degrees in marketing did not exist back then, but human nature, combined with language, does prove that a rose, named something else, will not smell as sweet as that which we call “rose.” If a beautiful rose, plump, yellow and sweet, was labeled “city shoe slime,” it would struggle to find its audience. Likewise, we can take something foul-smelling, rename it (preferably in French, say, l’eau des roses rouge) and watch them line up. You have underestimated the power of the mind, the need to believe what we think.

“There are more things in earth and heaven, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I forgive this one, assuming you didn’t actually know philosophers because if you did, you would know that they can think of so many more things than what exists in all of earth and heaven. And heaven’s heaven. Philosophy, anyone’s philosophy, is born of this world, this earth, but refuses to be confined, takes, as its very purpose, defining and then undefining and redefining. Maybe you knew one or two, but you never went to a cocktail party with several of them. Philosophers with a slight buzz and a constant supply of shrimp are a terrifying fun.

“All the world’s a stage.” An occupational hazard for a playwright, but all the world is not a stage. All the world is mostly backstage. The props thrown about between scenes. Actors smoking to calm their nerves. Everyone is naked and there is no privacy. Chaos. Fights. Infidelities. The stage is polished, rehearsed, mapped and, well-lit. About .25% of the world is a stage. The rest is passing time waiting for our lines.

“‘Tis better to have loved and lost.” Clearly, you never loved. And lost. A baby in your arms. And then you bury him.

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” I quibble here with “the.” “The question.” As if there are no other questions. To survive this pain or not. To live through it or not. To decide, this one day, if a next is worth having? I will grant you it is “a question.” It is not “THE question.” Here are some other questions, which I would argue, are more important than yours: are there people who love me? Whose hands have I touched that when I close my eyes, I can still feel? Bill, when you asked this question, I think you could hear your daughter’s voice saying, “Be. Please. Always be.”

To Chance

I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. I can’t imagine what that means for the smallest--the dog hops up beside me on the couch, the bananas ripen on the counter--and for the biggest things--the babies who die, the fires that burn down houses with the families sleeping upstairs--things in our lives.

We can make a reason. We can find a reason. But a reason, from a god or gods, a lesson of sorts that without this incident we would never know and then surely our lives would be less complete? I cannot.

Chance horrifies. All this pain and suffering for nothing? And all the joys out of nowhere? I grew up thousands of miles from my husband. We met at Purdue, which I almost didn’t go to were it not for a brief encounter with a professor from my first choice school. He said go to the school that gives you the most money. Indiana it was. 

And my husband admits it was not love at first sight. I understand. I’m not Midwestern and lack the classic Midwestern reserve and stoicism. I can be, to some, abrasive. But somehow, he grew to either ignore it or embrace it. So I might trace all the way back and say some force guided me north and not west. Some higher being softened his view, his heart. It all came together so perfectly, yes? As if we were made for each other. At very least, Fate played a part.

Sometimes the chances are so slim, incalculable even, that surely, something else was in play. Call it what you will, my friend says, anything but chance. We are debating this again, knowing neither of us will change our minds. We’ve done this so many times, by now it is a friendly dance, one we enjoy. We are not alone, she says. Outside of us, there is so much more we can’t know, and yet every day, we can see it working in our lives, she says.

I don’t disagree with her. Behind me, the young man at the counter grinds coffee beans for a customer. The scent punctuates the air. My friend pulls her hair behind her ear. I’m just grateful she is here with me.

To The Old Guy In The Car at the Stoplight

March. Driving home, the sun is low enough and bright enough that we put on our sunglasses. Our beer is cheap and our car is used, but at this point in our life, without shame, we spend serious money on sunglasses.

We’re alone in the car and turn the music up. Whatever we like best--the bass, the drum, the high notes--fills the car, then the road, then our life. The song takes over, and for a moment, we are 23 and we just got paid. We’re adults now and work hard, but we have not yet settled down. 

We play the drums on the steering wheel; we sing backup and then we sing lead. We have a full band behind us and then, suddenly, we’re alone on stage. Unplugged. We are rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country and western and punk. We are the Walt Whitman of post-modern, not a title we claim, but one we cannot deny.

If only there was a way to channel this musical genius, if only the world was ready for this crazy daze. 

The sun. The car. Our glasses. So sweet, it’s almost unbearable. 

Almost.

At the stoplight, the old man in the Corolla next to us has his window down and he’s trying to tell us something. We know what it is. We know what he wants. Smile a little.

Not today, old man. Today, we are not as old as we think.

To Forms Not Yet Liberated

You have to wait with profound patience.

Two lovers, one head tossed back, the other places an ear on the shoulder, their fingers pressed against each others’. Thousands of years in this granite. Michelago, in the quarry, studying the stones, passed right over you. Never heard your sighs. Never even brought his hand against the rock to feel your back, the curve of your neck.

Angry gods trapped with devils underfoot, snakes writhing, waiting to be released, the stone feeling tighter every century. You used to be angry at impossible humans, forever thinking they didn’t need you, they could do better, but now you feel pity for them. But you are still angry; you want to feel the summer rain, you want to hear leaves turning colors. You want a child to walk by and glide her tiny palm across your foot. You imagine it every day.

They are waiting all around us: in tree trunks, boulders, pieces of jade and onyx. Some so large they cannot be housed and some so tiny they could be mistaken for a coin. Some are there, just beneath the surface, easy to get to and elegant, but many live deep in the marrows, the sculptor working for years to find you.

We must support the artists who find and free the figures. In the course of our humanity, we will not free them all, but we must try. The forms are our function, the beauty, released from all the extra weight and trouble, revealed from every angle.

To the Rest Cure

So simple, right?

Fatigue. Nerves. Lack of appetite. The Rest Cure heals.

You have to stay in bed. You cannot talk to your family and you cannot talk to your friends. For three days, this will seem hard. You will hear their voices and see their faces. You will remember the way they sighed. You will want to tell them about the cranky nurse, the dry bread, the water that tastes...just...different.

But, by the fourth day, you feel lighter. Maybe that nurse wasn’t so cranky and the water today is almost sweet. The sheets smell good and today you will sit on the lawn. Under a blanket. In the sun. You feel the sun on your eyelids. When was the last time you felt the sun on your eyelids?

You have weeks to go. Can you feel the difference? 

And here’s the most important thing to know: everyone survived in your absence. Your husband, your kids, your parents, the neighbors--all fine. 

Because here’s why they love you: not for what you do, not for what you say, not for the dinners you cook or the time spent cleaning after others. 

They love you because they can see you. Or they know they will see you again. 

It’s that simple.

To Crying

Happy crying: I wasn’t keen on weddings, especially not my own. A dress? An aisle? No thank you. My friend talks me into it and eventually, I see her point. Families get together. Let them meet, she says. Let them celebrate! Ok. I give in. 

And for most of the day, I’m fine. It’s a party. But then, I have to speak. We have each selected poems to read. I get through the first two words and then, I cry. Overwhelmed. This day is big and beautiful. May. Summer is new. The freshness of the grass stuns us all. You think you know love, and then…

Movie crying: Hollywood has a knack. Lassie. Old Yeller. Marley. Please, stop with the dogs. Everyone knows the dog is just the family baby. We need a new movie rating: DG. Dog Gone. The dog dies. You need to know this going in.

Grief: I walk into class. It’s the first class I’ve faced since you died. Like every other day, my students are friendly and ask me how my weekend was. I pause. All weekend, I wanted to wake up from this bad dream. I know it’s going to take weeks, months, years before I can connect what I know and how I feel. I can lie now. I can say fine. And truly, if I say that, I will get through the next few minutes better than if I am honest.

But I have to be honest. I lost a very good friend this weekend, I say. You are my first class since I heard he died and so I have to say this. I cry and they fall silent. Awkward. Painful.

I don’t care. 

I do care. We are all in this together. We have to cry together. Because we cry enough alone.

To The Summer Cookouts

I’m just gonna open this bottle and set out a couple of glasses. I’m gonna set out some nachos and we are going to forget we care about our health.

This time, I promise not to complain about John Updike and how much I cannot stand the suburban angst that seems so popular. I will put aside my comments about music from the 70’s by white people that literally no one can dance to.  It won’t even be hard. I have a big mouth and I have a lot of opinions, but even I realize now is not the time.

In a poetry class, I remember Jack Myers telling us the story of his brother-in-law sitting next to him by the pool at a backyard cookout. They were reclining in lounge chairs and he had on mirror sunglasses and as they talked, this guy would punctuate his comments with phrases like, “But what are ya gonna do? Huh? What are ya gonna do?” Jack watched the clouds move across the lenses of his glasses. 

I never knew if it was defeat or relief.

Or both.

Now, we will never know. I have always thought any age is too young to die when the person who dies is someone you love. 8 days, 8 years, 80 years.

I have no space for your absence.

Drink up, my friend. The grading and the laundry and stories-not-yet-written can wait.

Today is unseasonably warm. 

The distance we have to bridge has never been smaller.

To The Tinkerbell Effect

Tinkerbell, near death, can only be saved if we, the audience, will her to live, save her with our faith in her. We clap and she revives and rises. Peter Pan could not be happier. The children, relieved.

We have done our duty and saved a fake fairy. It feels good.

Now, I see it everywhere: the faith that something is the case makes it the case.

Jewelry is Tinkerbell. That diamond has value because we believe it, Yes, it’s rare, but even rare only matters because we believe it matters. Give the wine a French name, slap a fancy label on it, and suddenly it’s sublime. This is no Two Buck Chuck, which may be fine for a summer barbecue. This is 50th anniversary wine. This says you have arrived. The finer things. Yes.

We live in the fairy world; Tinkerbells everywhere, sitting on our shoulders, curled in the crook our of necks, so convincing. What would the world be without Tinkerbells? 

Lawless. Artless. Empty.

She’s real. The construct matters, has weight and meaning. The diamond in your watch glints. The wine smooths your day. You don’t have to want to believe. You do.

Believing is seeing. Believing makes it so. Believing creates.

What else is there? The author begs you to have faith, bring her to life. You could say no. But you never do.

To The Books We Don't t Know We Write

You were reading a bad novel. “I can write this shit,” you said.

“No,” I said. You had enough to deal with. I was thinking that the last thing you need to guilt yourself with or pressure yourself with is writing the Great American Novel. Next summer, by the pool, you can get back to it.

“No. It’s better to read someone else’s book,” I said. Let them do the work. Let them sit down at the typewriter and bleed. 

Let someone else sit down and grate themselves raw. Let them reach down into the darkest part of themselves and bang it out on to the page. Let someone else reveal a secret even if no one else can see it. This is not a test of character or patience or talent or even discipline.

This is not a test. And we cannot fail.

We all write our lives, our stories, even when we don’t. I have recipe cards from my grandmother, one title “Rue.” She knew better, that the word in French is “Roux.” But one day, after I asked her to send me all her recipes, she sat down with a black ball point pen and a 3x5 index card and began:

     Rue

     ⅓ c. Oil 

     ⅓ c. Flour

In French, “Rue” is street. 

My grandfather kept calendars, years and years of calendars with the smallest details of his day marked in each square. His handwriting barely changing over the years. 

We all write every day and we all have a book by the end. Maybe not a best seller. And no one will make a movie out of it. 

But someone will read it. And they will know how much you had to bleed to get it down. How much we all suffer to get it down. They will be grateful you wrote as much as you did. They will put it all together. The meaning is made later, by the reader. They might think it’s shit. I doubt it.

To All the Things I Don’t Know About You

I don’t know the name of the dog who slept in your bed as a child. I don’t know the street you grew up on, but I know the town. I don’t know if you think breakfast is the most important meal of the day or if you would rather just wait until lunch. I do know you drink coffee.

I’ve never known who you voted for in all the past elections, though I do know your politics are complicated. I think I know what kind of car you drive, but not if you buy new or used. I do know you laughed when I said I don’t believe in car payments, not unless I have to. I don’t know why that’s funny.

I don’t know what you do when it’s 3:00 am and you can’t sleep. I don’t know if you believe in a soul, but I do think all souls are restless. I don’t know if you have ever been out of the country, but I do know you would love Ireland. Everyone loves Ireland. It’s a rule.

You hate rules. I know that. Especially the ones that apply to you.

I don’t know your secrets, but I think I know your hopes. We can hide our secrets so much better than we can hide our hopes. 

I don’t know what you did last Tuesday. I don’t know what you said to the man at the checkout at the grocery store. I don’t know what station you have preset on your car radio. I don’t know if you listen to the radio or just plug in your own music.

I know what you want me to know.

Everything else is just a guess.

From Some Type of Heaven

Forget what you’ve seen in Renaissance murals and church windows. All those fat baby angels and lords with long white beards and shockingly muscular bodies for their age. 

If you hear someone who has been revived talking about a beautiful golden light, know it was just the refraction from my single malt scotch. Neat. In a crystal glass. 

Heaven is nothing like our dreams. If it was, it would not be heaven.

You will love it here. Gumbo? Every day for lunch. A beach with Wifi and Netflix? Right this way. Heaven smells like sandalwood or lavender or the crook of your baby boy’s neck. This heaven is made for you. This heaven has been waiting for you.

And, not coincidentally, it is right next to the heavens of all the people you know and love. Your mother, who died when you were a teenager. Your uncle, her brother, who gave you a hard time and you loved him for it. From where you sit, you can reach over touch the neighbor who died seven years ago in storm; he is still telling bad jokes. The newly dead: David Bowie. Your friend who died suddenly last fall in her sleep.

The best of all your lives. This is some type of heaven.

And you are a most unlikely angel.

To JDS, In Memoriam

I drove my son to school today.

I worked with students. 

It snowed most of the morning.

I read the last text I sent you yesterday, asking if the doctor had a plan. 

I read your answer: yes. He was a nice doctor. He sat with you for an hour.

Great, I said. What’s the plan?

I thought maybe you’d tell me today.

All day I thought of Roethke’s letter to his student who died. “If only I could nudge you from this sleep.” I read some Yeats. “...a crowd of stars.”

They didn’t help. We want to believe that writing helps. We talk about it in the hall before class. Writing is something, at least. Isn’t it? 

It’s Friday. It is an ordinary Friday.

On my way home, I see a car accident. I have to make sure. I slow down. Everyone’s ok.

Everyone is ok. 

No one is ok.

I don’t want to stop writing this letter. It’s all I have.

It’s all we’ve ever had. 

So, just me to you, just this, let me write you an exit. I’m going to pretend for a good long while that you are in the cabin in western Pennsylvania. You have gone “hunting," but everyone knows you are just reading. It’s a crappy novel, but you don’t care. The air is clean, isn’t it? The sun sets just a little slower here. The quiet. The peace.

The peace.

The peace.

I will try to remember how much you loved that peace.

To Commitment

[I wrote this one about/for a good friend who passed away today. So I'm reposting it for tomorrow's post. He was one of the few people who knew about this blog before I started it, and he was always very encouraging about my writing. I remain committed. More than ever. Because, really, that is all we have.]

My friend writes me, “Every morning I see my 60-yr-old neighbor head out for her walk. Today she was trudging along, umbrella open, head down against the driving rain. You should write a letter to commitment.”  Only, I think he doesn’t want me to write about commitment, really, but about her commitment: her umbrella angled against the rain, the implication that now that’s she’s 60, she could take a day off, the morning routine that could be so easily broken. One day you just don’t go.

He wants me to write about that, but of course, I want to write about his commitment. He drives 47 minutes to work, all through winter. No matter what time I get to the office--7:45, 7:15, 7:03--he is there before me, lights on, jacket off, grading or writing class notes. When his students come for help, he greets them with, “Hey! What’s up?” as if he has been doing nothing but waiting for that person to walk in.

He would say that’s not commitment, that’s just a day. We talk about the upsides of teaching and realize, in many ways, how lucky we are. How hard is it to commit to a life like this?

He married his high school sweetheart. When he talks about his 13-year old son, he says, “My little boy…” They live in the same area he grew up in. He has a PhD in literature. When his son’s baseball team traveled all over the Midwest last summer in an unpredictable playoff season, he went with them, staying in hotels and eating crappy road food.

Commitment is easy to see when it’s someone else’s. That’s you, we think, doing that again. We look and see all the other choices you could be making: staying in bed, getting to work at a normal hour, letting someone else drive the kids. When it is ours, though, the choice is often so obvious as to not even seem a question.

Commitment isn’t choosing every morning, even in the rain, to go for a walk. Commitment is defining yourself once as a person who walks every day, rain or snow, and then believing it, all the other options gone. It’s just me, you think, this is just who I am.

To The Indecisive Squirrel

Today is your lucky day because it’s morning, I’ve had my coffee, I’m not in a rush and the traffic is quiet.

So go ahead and take your time right in the middle of the lane. Please, do not rush. Shatter the stereotype we all have of squirrels as being frenetic little animals who can escape quickly at the very last second.

Not you. At least not today. Trees everywhere. It’s warm for a winter morning and the road holds the heat well. Something, a burn of sunlight through the clouds in just this spot or a memory suddenly appearing before you, has stopped you and and so, it has stopped me.

I have all the time in the world right now. The well of my patience is deep. This day will last forever. Nothing is more important than you.

To Algorithms I Would Like to See

Because soon, all experience will be translated into mathematics and because soon, all that math will be formulated into computer programs that will solve problems we didn’t know we had, we should consider which problems should be addressed first.

The Problem of Future-Predicting: The problem isn’t that we don’t or that we shouldn’t, but we are very bad at it, even when we call in science. We are not rational people, especially when we most need to be, when we will be making decisions. We need to be able to enter in the variables and simply know the likelihood of the possible outcomes. If I say this to my partner, will she get angry? Or will she see the love in it? Will she hate me or be grateful? Is this a 60/40 proposition or more like 90/10? We should not leave this to chance or our blind faith in each other.

The Problem of the Sleepy Dog or Baby Resting on Your Lap: We spend the morning trying to tire them out. We play, walk, feed them. They will not leave us in peace and their eyes follow us everywhere with the hope that maybe we will come be with them. “Let’s do something together!” But we have limits. Maybe there is work to do or maybe we just want a few minutes alone please. Either way, the baby or the dog should stop squirming. After several minutes of quiet time on the couch, they get it. Their eyes droop and they breath deeper. The problem is moving: how do I maximize the sleep time for this small creature, especially after I extract myself from the couch? There should be an app for that.

The Problem of Believing: We need to believe. Science and reason and careful analysis help, but first, we believe. We are curious and believe in asking the questions. We believe we can ask and then, foolish or not, we believe we can answer. We believe an answer is possible. How do I get out of this trouble I find myself in? Where do I find the next trouble? Can I find some new combination of these old things or do I have to invent something entirely fresh? Can I write you? Will you answer? How long can I wait? Believing keeps us moving. If nothing else, I believe in my morning coffee. But for every belief there is an equal and opposite belief--or beliefs--I am choosing not to chose. You have forgotten me. You worked hard on forgetting. When you see my name, nothing happens.

To Occam’s Razor

The fewest words. The least amount of steps. The smallest effort.

The time spent deciding what is and isn’t needed is not as simple as the outcome.

I do not need this house. I could live in a smaller one. We could, all three of us, even the dogs, live in one room. We don’t need the car. We will survive without our phones, without the computers. 

We could move south, very far south, and we would not need our heavy coats, these winter boots. We could sell the car and use bikes.

Living a simple life is complicated. The solution may seem simple but getting there, the process, is anything but. 

Not only do we have to make all the decisions, not just about things but about how we actually get through the day most easily, we have to carry out the plan. 

Simple may be easy, but getting to simple is not.

If the most simple is the best, then we must line up all the options before us and compare. And to do that, we need the options to be there, we have to create them.

William of Occam never mentioned that part. The goal is noble, but like most religious teachings, it is an aspiration rather than a practice.

I pull on my coat. I grab the dog leashes, a different kind of leash for easy dog because one will choke if I attach it to her collar and the other wants to run ahead. I’m walking the dogs in the window between work and dinner. Some days, this is the easiest part of my day.

Some days, it’s the hardest.

To Radio Listeners in 1938 Who Thought "War of the Worlds" Was Real

Today, we smirk, all smug in our 21st century wisdom and hindsight.

So gullible, we say, we’re so much smarter now.

We think fears are different. Our fears are real; we can see the tracers of them in the air, even if we can’t see what makes them. Something must, and that enough is evidence. But aliens suddenly invading the world? Come on. Nonsense.

But you know better. Even if, days later, you were ashamed to admit it, in the moment, you knew it was possible, even plausible. You’d seen things you never thought you’d see. You saw the decadence of the 1920’s, the short dresses and long cigarettes. The new cars people would drive, going nowhere, just for the drive itself. Cities blocks bursting with immigrants, and the nation had finally reached the Pacific Ocean, taken over the whole continent, from sea to shining sea and the party was on. 

And then, out of nowhere, dust. Dust so fine it would settle in the very creases of your ears as easily as it blew off the prairies. Breadlines and soup lines and unemployment lines snaking around corners. All pride finally swallowed. 

Abroad, the news is bleak. War, again, continental wide. Every day, news reports suggest any day now, any minute, the enemy is coming. You have to live in two times: the now--when you are looking for work, doing day jobs, taking in laundry--and the could be--boys getting called by the draft, packing up small duffle bags, taking a couple photos, maybe. Of course, you would be proud of them, but you wish more they didn’t have to go. 

Aliens? A supreme intelligence that finally has finally made its way here? Look at the skylines, look at the roads, look at the factories and radios and telephones. When the question is “How far can this go?”, the imagination answers with all the possibilities. Men from Mars or the moon in a world like this--unpredictable, terrifying, uncontrollable--seems as reasonable as a market crash, as wastelands in Oklahoma, as world war. Another world war.

When the news breaks, when you hear the screams and eye witness reports, when you hear the events unfolding, when you haven’t felt safe in your own living room for years, you are not a fool for believing. 

You have trusted enough. I don’t blame you. You were not the first. You will not be the last.

To Answering Machine Messages

The ones we leave are best short, a quick, “Hey, it’s me. Call me.”

When we try to explain why we are calling, we go on too long: “Hey, it’s me. I was just wondering if you were heading out of town this weekend or not because I have two extra tickets to the game if you want to come. You can bring a friend; we were going to go out for dinner, but if that doesn’t work for you we could alwa [beeeeeep].”

We have to figure out if we call back and continue the message or let it go and hope it’s enough.

Talking to people who aren’t there gets complicated.

Especially if it's a hard call and we weren’t expecting to get the machine. We’ve worked ourselves up all day, worked up the nerve to say whatever bad news or let down or broken promise we have to say and after the fourth ring, we know what we will have to do, and we aren’t prepared.

“Hey, it’s me. Uhhh, listen, I was just calling because I was hoping to catch you. Maybe when you get this, call me. It’s not urgent, but we should talk soon. I’m home the rest of the day, but then tomorrow, I’m [beeeeep].”

We are bad at improv.

But we are worse at interpreting. We save the messages, even though we shouldn’t. We should let it go, be bigger than this. Move on. Surely we have better things to do with our time than listen to that damn message again.

We play it again. When we are sleepy and really should be in bed. We listen again. Was that a crack in the voice? Is there someone in the background? Is that sadness or relief? We imagine those lips near the phone, speaking so softly.