To People Who Leave Their Curtains Open and Their Lights on at Night

I don’t mean to stare.

 

The dog has found something fascinating in the grass and so I’m standing here in front of your house longer than I planned.

You’re in your recliner, watching a prime time news show like 20/20. Your wife is in the kitchen; I see her down the hall. She’s putting dishes in the dishwasher. You change the channel.

You have pictures on the wall, daughters maybe? Grandkids? The curios cabinet filled with tea cups and saucers sits dark in the corner of the room.

This is so ordinary as to be wholly unremarkable. Nothing here is special. But I cannot stop looking.

Maybe you had an argument yesterday and still, you aren’t speaking.

Maybe you have a secret you want to say.

Maybe she knows already. Maybe she doesn’t care.

Maybe she does.

Maybe she is already planning Thanksgiving dinner.

I remember you have a daughter in the Army. You must have to distract yourselves. You’ve learned how to Skype.

The woman takes a seat on the couch, says something. The dog is ready to move on. I’m lost in this tiny movie. I have all the plot I need and the actors are brilliant in their roles.

To Kids Riding Bikes

Frankly, biking scares me now. Biking on a street with cars and the people who drive them has become a distant memory. No helmet or rearview mirror or little bell can assure me I will survive the ride. And trails are full of rocks and tree roots and other bikers at very high speeds. No, it’s not for me.

But I remember, physically remember, what it feels like to really ride a bike, to feel that kind of control and speed. We didn’t have bikes as cave people, but biking is a primal feeling. For me, it was the first experience of actual speed, a speed I would never accomplish on my own, a speed you can’t feel in a car.

One year, when I wanted to upgrade from my no-gear hand-me-down purple faux-blue jean looking banana seat bike to a 10 speed Schwinn, my mom took me to the bike shop on Lovers Lane to get an idea of a bike I would like. I picked out a beautiful, sleek brown 10-speed model. Or at least, I wished for. I was advised, clearly, that if I wanted a bike, that pretty much that would be all I would get for Christmas that year. This was a big deal. I wanted it.

Glorious. Is there any other word to describe that feeling? Freedom. Free. Agency. Range. Suddenly, a place that is much too far to walk to becomes a 20 minute bike ride. The pool. The movie theater. So many more places to spend my babysitting money.

Yesterday, I was running in a neighborhood with hills. Early in the morning. July. Most kids are still sleeping and their parents are drinking coffee in the peace and quiet. But one boy is out on his bike. He rides up beside me. He’s not sitting down, but standing on the pedals, pumping hard. We are headed up hill. His dog follows him--a small brown dog with long ears that fly back. Somehow this short dog is keeping up. He reaches the top of the hill just before me and calls out to the dog, “Come on!”

He lets out a whoop as he rides downhill, still standing but not pedaling. His shirt flaps in the wind as he rides right down the middle of the street. He is nothing but motion and joy and 8 AM July cool and 10 years old and eternal. He is in complete contact with the world. He could be anyone, but--joy of joys--he is this boy, right here. The dog is this dog. Right here. 

I feel it, watching him. I am running downhill and the gravity takes me. Let go. Ride. 

You are--I am--eternal.

To Boredom

Curiosity gets all the credit.

In speeches for Pulitzers and Nobel Prizes, in scholarship award letters, in memoirs and biographies, they say things like, “She was always a curious child,” and “He never stopped asking questions!” and “My curiosity grew and grew until…”

But you and I know that you are the unsung hero. Without you, curiosity doesn’t even exist. You are the soil it grows it, the air it breathes, the sunlight and the water. You are the incubator they never see.

Face it. You’re not sexy or interesting in any way. You are, in a word, boring. You are the mid-Saturday afternoon in someone’s 15th summer. A kid too old to go to summer camp or anything with “Teen” in the title and too young to do anything else. And the Internet is down. And all the books have been red and it’s raining outside. All the friends are on vacation and the dog is too old to play fetch. You are as slow as time can be. It’s 3:07. A cricket. A car passes. The fan looks lopsided. It’s 3:08.

You’re a special kind of torture. So passive. So quiet. So very intimate. We don’t invite you in or seek you out. And yet there you are, at the dinner party we were looking forward to. At the zoo. The funeral. My god, you are ruthless.

We think new ideas start with “Why does…” and “What if…” and “I wonder what…” but that’s wrong. They begin when you walk in, when you flick ideas away from us, clearing the air. Not this, you say, not this. Good Lord, definitely not this--until we have dug so deep into the bottom of our soul, dug up the one unfinished, raw, unformed thought that finally feels solid. It was weight enough.

“You can thank me later,” you want to say. But you never get the credit.