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It started with a rear window that wouldn't retract. I rolled the window down and down it stayed. Then the headlights would turn on, at odd moments while the car was parked. I'd reach for the button on the keyfob to lock the doors and see if that would reset them but before I could press it the lights would go off. Then a few seconds later, back on. So I started taking the train.
The overhead fan in the kitchen shorted out last year. Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, the oven went. There's a loose board on the wainscotting in the bathroom. Water jettisoning from the radiator at 3AM and pooling languidly under the south corner of the throwrug. Not particularly anyone's ideal destination.
The weedwacker won't work so the yard's overgrown. Last week I went at the high grass with a pair of scissors for an hour and developed a nasty inch-long blister on my middle finger. Now every day I replace it's the band aid because the adhesive fails to stick more than 24 hours.
The snazzy new shoes I bought impulsively are, it turns out, too tight. I shift uncomfortably everywhere I go, and sometimes when I suspect it won't arouse anyone's fury, I take off my shoes on the train and sit there in my socks. There's a hole forming under the big toe of my right sock. My pants have a detached belt loop.
One thing about living in the present is we make it impossible for ourselves to do it. We divide the present into seasons, into months, into days, scheduled meetings, lunch breaks, paragraphs, sentences, words, ellipses. We stretch out time to accomodate our plans and it crunches each present moment like some Newtonian accordian into oblivion. We plan, or know that we should plan, or spend our days avoiding planning, putting it off until... suddenly the future becomes now and we can avoid planning for the next thing, riding one wave of anxious procrastination to the next. And there are some of you lucky people who may burn your bridges and forget the horrors of your past altogether, but not me. I live there, too, there rather than here. Comparing this time to ancient times, comparing my milestones to my parents', trying to honor their legacies by... what? Getting up in the morning and finding the cat spit-up on my slippers?
My great grandmother used to hide her smoking. Mom would bring us kids by the second floor apartment to check on her grandma and the place would be immaculately maintained with Pledge and Lysol. Not a mote of dust in sight and every little trinket and doodad in it's place; the candybowl, the glass knickknacks, the 30 year old remote control on the smearless glass-covered agate coffee table. But should you happen to pop into the bathroom, behind the expertly folded powdered towels and the bowl of potpurri and seashells, was the faint whiff of a Parliment Lite.
Before I settle into an empty seat on the train and scroll through the newsfeed to see who died today, I hunt for the seat. The rumbling and screaming contraption tumbles us all around but especially me since I'm on my feet. Outside, a stream of twilight florescence is the perfect repition of vanishing. I'm quick to lurch into a germy seat facing backwards, opposite a man wearing a tie decorated with roosters. His eyes do not interrogate, thankfully, me but remain indentured to his phone as I take the last sip of my Celsius and tuck my knees in, ever cognizant of my tall body's inconvenience for existing in in this shared space. The train creaks and wails and I close my eyes, embracing my old neglected friend exhaustion. The man gets off at the next stop where I notice that he walks with a cane. I steal his seat when he leaves and throw away the empty drink can in the bin.
Found myself wondering why some people meet with life's little disappointments by going into a fulminous rage. Maybe I lack fight. Younger me might have pushed back harder, a profane-ridden retort to the aggregrate of slight ingraciousnesses of fate... I'm getting older. I tuck in my gut and pull up my pants and get to work fixing. Yank things apart, replace broken pieces, try turning it off then turning it back on. How many times must we do this? When will it be the one last begrieved inconvenience and then I tear the whole place down and move to Bhutan.
In between the obituaries on the newsfeed there is a post-splashdown interview with astronaut Christina Koch who revealed that her old high school had erected a statue of her and it made her uneasy. "I was worried that the people that would walk through the door and see it would think that they weren't enough because that statue was too perfect of a representation. At the little speech-making that I did when it opened I made sure to talk about the person I was in high school and how unsure I was of myself... how many mistakes I made. How many people I hurt, people that hurt me. I just wanted them to know that they don't have to be as perfect as the statue."
Once I went to see great grandma and she didn't have her hearing aids in so she didn't hear me knock nor come in. She was sitting in her chair facing the wallpaper, face averted from the window, the light, completely oblivious to the occassional siren blues and reds. Her mind had gone somewhere else, she was thinking of something else, she was somewhere else unaccountable. I thought for a moment she might be dead, of course, but then she turned and saw me smiled and it was like sunlight through the leaves, the radiance and the shadows dancing there together in the crowsfooted corners of her eyes. She was happy to see me. I've spent years searching for another smile like that one. She reached out her bruised hand for me to hold and I held it and smiled too, I couldn't help myself.
Go to work, pay your bills, wash your clothes, clean behind your ears. Brush your teeth thoroughly after each meal, except this one, fruit plate and some black coffee, so I can spend the day smelling of apricots and Folgers. Tomorrow is, as the saying goes, a new day, but today is, too. Or it can be. That's the thing about a story of the broken, it obfuscates everything that's actually working out alright.
Koch continued "we have a long story. A lot of people behind us, a lot of misteps, couple victories, but all that came together to make us these people that very humanly carried everyone's dreams around the far side of the moon. You know, before we did that, we were enough. And I would say to them, you are too."
A woman taps my shoulder and to wake me says "I think this is your stop." I wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth and I thank her without looking at her, grab my things and rush off to walk the rest of the way home. The night's chill is so exhilerating that I forget that my feet hurt. Walking with my neck craned upwards searching for stars between the clouds. When I reach the door I the notice that the lock latch mounting is going slack. Where did I leave the screwdriver? Friday's payday. Maybe I'll have enough to get someone to look at the car.
