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.