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Traffic light

 

You are in the passenger seat of your SUV, on the way to Costco where you know you'll spend hundreds of dollars on things like cheese sticks, chicken breasts, and corn chips.

You see her on the side of the road, holding a sign that says she has two young daughters. There is something scrawled about an ex-husband, but you can't make it out. She is pregnant. Her hair has been bleached white and she wipes at tears that course down her cheeks.

The light turns green and your husband accelerates.

Just another down and out person on Aurora. Another suffering face that your brain makes room for but that your life does not.

You think about her all day. You leave the house by yourself later and consider trying to find her. You want to give her a twenty. You won't miss it.

But then you remember the last time you did that, and the disappointment that spread through you like black grape juice sullying a white dishcloth, the stain growing and growing until it was the size of a smashed grapefruit.

Why do you get to have so much?

Leave some if you can

 

So, why did it amuse instead of infuriate you when the man under the Ballard Bridge stuck his face in your open car window and said, "Hey Beautiful, hey babeeee. You can kidnap me any time", then let loose with a Louis Armstrong-esque laugh, proceed to amble to the bus stop and flip open a girlie mag?

You are a bundle of contradictions. And not always in a good way.

*

Downtown Saturday you saw a sketched out guy huddled over a garbage can, attempting to mix a cocktail of liquids he found in the bottoms of paper cups. He was making a show of it, as if he were behind some shiny bar rattling stainless steel shakers and dipping glass rims in shallow dishes of salt.

Then there was Captain America in Capitol Hill, with the marionettes and creepy flute, bashing a Barbie on the sidewalk. He had a small bowl of coins that said, "Leave some if you can, take some if you need."

*

Back in your sleepy neighborhood, you are getting ready for school to start. Second grade for Max. Kindergarten for Claire. Only other parents understand the magnitude of this. Kindergarten. Both kids in the same building for six hours per day. Time! Ohmygod, TIME. You have so many plans for it that your head whirls.

*

Sunday, you and the family went on your annual blackberry forage. It had been a rocky week for you and J. Exceedingly rocky. It was good to be out all together. To be kind to each other. To watch your kids get excited about something as homey as picking berries.

*

Your sister had surgery Monday. Big surgery. Like, remove-several-organs surgery. Though the two of you don't talk often, you thought of her all day and hoped she wasn't afraid or in much pain. You love her. You wish you talked more, though you mostly blame yourself for being out of touch.

Their whole lives

The last combat brigade is coming home from Iraq. Which is to say, the active phase of our war there is over. Still, some 50,000 troops stay behind to continue advising the Iraqi military.

Snug in my little Seattle cocoon, I've been almost completely removed from what's gone on in Iraq. I've read news stories. There was the occasional young man I knew three times removed who'd gone over to serve. That's the extent, though, of my immersion into the operation that's killed many thousands of Americans and Iraqis.

On the day I went into labor with Max, March 20, 2003, the headlines, in 120-point sans serif, screamed that we'd gone to war. It was all anyone talked about. 

I was in triage at Swedish hospital and the nurse assigned to me didn't have the innate sensitivity to keep quiet. 

I cared about sending people to war. I did. Even doubled over, clutching my swollen gut as contractions gripped me three in a row before easing so I could catch a breath, I cared.

But, I was bringing forth a new person and I didn't want to, couldn't bear to, hear about the ravages of the world as I silently grimaced through giving birth. Finally, from somewhere inside the haze of pain, I found my voice.

"Enough!" I said to the nurse, my husband, and anyone else within earshot of my curtained off room. "No more war chitchat. Please!"

They hushed. And I folded back into myself, hoping beyond hope we were doing the right thing by bringing a child into these times.

Later that day, after Max was snuggled in my arms, J. went out and bought a couple newspapers sporting the headlines I found so disturbing a few hours earlier. We still have the papers around here somewhere. Maybe I'll dig them out and show them to the kids. "Look," I'll say. "This war has been going on your entire lives. And now it's over."

Sort of.

Visitors

I hear the soft jangle of a charm bracelet (wind chimes?) as I drive my car. The woman who sits next to me (there are two, one in the backseat) doesn't seem to notice. I cock my head, squint my eyes. What is it?

Then I realize the sound is the ethereal peal of a hearing aid. It rings, its notes trilling up and down like alien communication.

*****

I'm making another meal. Another god forsaken dinner. This is what I sound like in my head: "Okay, I have to zest a fucking lemon. Fuck, the grater is dirty in the sink. I'll just give it a quick rinse. Wait, was raw chicken in here last night? Now I have to wash it. Boil the water. Get the corn going. Shit, I still need to shuck it. It looks old, it looks rotten. DAMN it. Still need to zest the fucking lemon..."

The food. It is so tiresome.

At least I have the music of the hearing aid to distract me.

*****

Sneaking my wine, sneaking my internet. Bad hostess. Bad.

*****

I drop off the two women at Pier 55 for their boat ride. I watch as they shuffle up to the booth to buy their tickets. They are so darling. So willing.

The car is so quiet.

Raving

Wherein I get all crazy fangirl and write a post about a concert.

But it wasn't just any concert. It was Imogen Heap.

Tickets on sale a couple months ago. Row GA! I was excited. Until someone told me GA means General Admission. Dumb Ass.

I don't make it to shows much anymore. The late, the standing, the hot.

Imogen was worth it.

I hadn't looked forward to a concert that much since I saw Michael Jackson in the Pontiac Silverdome when I was 15.

This was better. Watching, stupified. Inspired. Crushing. Happy.

Close enough to see the tiny microphones taped to the insides of her wrists and individual strands of her insane hair.

To catch the virus of wanting to create. To become so sick with it for a few days I have a hard time focusing on kids and work. Hallucinating that I possess an eighth of the gumption someone like Imogen does.

Drifting, veering, trying.

The curious barking of the dog in the nighttime

You are trying to sleep. A dog barks from far away. It is not a direct hindrance to your drifting off, but the yelps punctuate your thoughts. Unhappy! With! The! Day! Marriage! Is! Crazyhard! You press the pillow more tightly over your head. You think of the demure peach pills in your bathroom that could send you down sleepy river in fifteen minutes flat. But you don't want to rely on them. They're fine for sometimes. But this. This is just run of the mill anxiety. Hormonal blues. You will resist the peach pills.

Saturday there was sun. Everyone seemed happy. Too happy? Shinyhappy, their faces tilted up to the bright sky, as they made comments like, Enjoy it, this is our summer. Your neighbor clipped mint from the backyard for mojitos. The kids played and played in the creek, which is really a drainage ditch, but they don't know the difference.

Sunday was a sharp contrast. Nonweather. You all went to Home Depot so your husband could buy a giant post on which to hook a zipline for Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat. A good dad. You made playdoh, which kept the kids busy for about an hour. You tried not to read into your husbands every footfall, every snap of the cupboard door, each time he wouldn't look at you when you wanted him to.

Only! Two! More! Weeks! Of! School! Holy! Shit! You feel sorry for whoever lives next door to the house with the dog. You wonder about summer. How will you entertain the children? How will you work? And, more importantly, write? How will their constant presence not drive you insane? How can you enjoy the days with them so you can look back on the summer of '10 fondly?

You contemplate starting an anonymous blog so you can say what you really want. You dismiss the idea. If you did, the words and the bad energy would still be out there in the universe. You try to imagine to what extent you bug the crap out of your husband. You know you must. With your silences and then your talking too much and your constant desire for "free" time. He's too nice to tell you, though. Just as well, because you don't really want to know.

Slipping from bed, you pad across the floor in time to the staccato barks. You find the bottle of peach pills and dump a few into your hand. You break one in half and swallow it, bitter remnants lingering on your tongue.

Back between the sheets, your mind quiets almost instantly. The same thoughts hang around, but they're mellower, less insistent. You fall asleep and dream that your teeth fall out into your hand. You used to have that dream a lot when you worked for two controlling publishers at a magazine. Back then, you looked up the meaning of the dream (something you're not wont to do, but did because the dream recurred so many times), the description explained that losing your teeth signifies powerlessness. Or fear of change.

You think about the dream several times the next day, but can't reckon what it has to do with your daily life. As far as you know, you don't feel especially powerless. Nor do you fear change. So you let it go. You get on with things, relieved the dog is silent.

Cringe

 

Life is over! All of my dreams have been thrown on the floor. Shattered. Mutilated. Broken into millions of pieces! Bill likes Kara Jones, of all people!

Andy asked me if I would wear his I.D. bracelet and I've only known him for, like, two days!!!

Janet Jackson was on the American Music Awards last night. She sang and danced to "Control". It was really cool!!!

Last week a guy from my high school died of cancer. Even though I graduated with a small class (80 kids), I couldn't remember who he was, exactly. So I dug out some old year books. And with them, in a box labeled Angie's Childhood, I found several spiral-bound notebooks--journals I had to keep for for my seventh and twelfth grade English classes.

I've never been much of a journaler on my own. So I was happy to come across these. Until. I actually started reading them. The thirteen-year-old me was sweet and sheltered and concerned with grades and friends and family. Lots of things happened that year that I only vaguely remember: my uncle getting a cornea transplant, my mom spending eight days in a hospital, my sister deciding she hated me (with good reason, I was a tool to her). But most of my entries are spent agonizing over basketball games I (barely) played, scores, being, really, really excited for Halloween and Christmas, etc.

And then comes my Senior Year journal. In which? I was a moronic, dramatic, boy-crazy spaz. Did I mention boy crazy? Every entry, and I'm not exaggerating even a little, detailed the daily encounters with, or snubs by my crush. My spirits soared or my heart shattered across the pages in overly-swoopy, bubbly letters.

Reading them, I winced. A lot. I might have even buried myself under the couch cushions and whimpered a little.

I act depressed, but sometimes I don't and I think people worry that I'm going crazy.

Bill was hanging all over Kara. It was awful! They danced slow even to fast songs. Greg kept asking me, begging me, to slow dance. It's like, be real, I'm about a foot taller than him.

I got new shoes last night. Royal blue penny loafers and they kill my feet, but I don't care!!!

Bill asked me to dance!!! :) It was so great! It was to "Walk like an Egyptian" by the Bangles.

I think I bombed a Physics test because I didn't study. My dad will be mad!

Bill never called. But I didn't really think he would. I feel like such a reject!!!

The favorite game

  
Kitty Cat came to me yesterday morning while I showered. She was wild-haired, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. She'd just jumped from bed and checked a tiny pot that sits on her windowsill. "Sprouts!" she crowed. "Little green sprouts coming up!"

She's been diligently watering them for six days. Too much, probably. I worried she'd kill them with kindness. But so far, so good.

Soon, we'll transplant them and, eventually, zinnias will blossom.

*****

It's another day, very different from the one where Kitty Cat burst in on me and did her new sprout dance. 

I'm bitter. Unappreciative. J. and I go round and round an issue that centers on a guitar. The guitar represents nearly every dissatisfaction we have in our lives together. It's so fucking stupid and symbolic and crazy-making. Sometimes I look at that guitar and want to smash it to bits. Other times I feel sorry for it, sitting there all shiny and neglected.

J. is working a ton again and feeling guilty about his almost total immersion into lawyering. Yet, I don't know how to not take it personally--his schedule that is really too full for me. Sometimes I think back on the days when he was a clerk for an appellate judge and wonder what it would've been like if he'd stayed there. We'd be poorer. And I'd have had to work, too, all this time with small children. But he'd be home.

I don't know. Nothing is ideal. It's just the way it goes, I guess.

*****

Kitty Cat woke me this morning at four. She'd had another bad dream. I laid on the futon in her room and we played the favorite game, our voices whispery as the rest of the house slept. What's your favorite food? What's your favorite game?  What's your favorite flower? It helps her forget whatever vile thing haunted her subconscious.

I want someone to play the favorite game with me...Crab...strip poker...peonies...

Surely I'm wrong

There are some things I know from spending so much time at my coffee shop of choice:

A woman, about seven months pregnant, is trying to decide if she should go on an exotic trip. She wants to, but isn't sure it's safe. She's spoken to several friends about her predicament.

A man in love with his own voice and gestures runs a company that makes nutrition bars. They are sold at Whole Foods. He very much wants his nutrition bar to be the Number One nutrition bar in existence.

Another man, this one not nearly so well groomed, with a greasy black-gray beard, sits in the corner day after day. He jiggles his knees compulsively and stares with wide, baggy eyes, a small smile cavorting across his lips. He speaks to no one.

Next to me, a woman drafts a book. She seems as unfocused as I do, writing a little, then chatting online, browsing, downloading music, writing a little more. I say, "Sorry to be nosy, but that looks suspiciously like a manuscript."

"A memoir," she says. She's been working on her story almost as long as I've been working on mine. She's on her third draft. I think I've seen her around school, that she's another parent.

I marvel at all the creative people, ambitious people, down-trodden people who pass in and out of my life everyday. I'm sad that, most of them, I'll never really know.

Though in certain ways it seems like I do, like I might. Sometimes I feel I've run across so many people in my life that I see the intrinsic sameness of us all. Each of us possess bits of the same qualities, they are just rationed differently. A little more drive and energy for this one. A touch of mental illness for that. More compassion for him. A heavier stroke of insecurity for her.

Or maybe I'm just naïve.

Hand in hand with a longitude/latitude

The other night J. and I had a talk that left me sad and a little stunned. We were lying in bed, facing the ceiling, blankets up to our chins. Earlier in the day he'd told me about a co-worker who was offered a job in the Bay Area. 

"What would you do?" I asked him. "If that were you?"

He said he didn't know. But that he'd like my support, my willingness to relocate if a great opportunity arose for him.

I was borrowing trouble. No such 'lucky' break has come along. Yet. I say 'yet' because, though we moved to Seattle as separate, single people and both planned to make this city our home, his heart still, in some ways, belongs to California. Also, his clients are mostly in San Francisco. A move south, at least the discussion of a move south, seems inevitable to me. Or perhaps it is just fear because I am so snug and so happy where I am.

In the last twelve years, I have fallen in love with Seattle. While he's been toiling in a tall tower downtown, I've been roving around (mostly with children in tow), establishing connections, bonding, swooning.

I love it here. I do. I love the temperate climate that is enough to placate my need for seasons without being too harsh. I love how the grass stays green all year. I love the mountains to the East and West. I love the city with all its nooks and crannies and bridges and alleys. I love the people I've met. I spent my twenties moving back and forth and now I feel like I'm home. Like Seattle is it.

I asked J. "Does it feel like I'm married to this place more than I'm married to you?"

Ever the pragmatist, he answered, "You may be."

"I don't want that," I said. But I couldn't deny it. Not honestly. I am always hearing of women (and okay, maybe a man here or there) moving for the sake of their spouse's career. Moving, in theory anyway, for the financial stability of the family. Why can't I be that kind of person?

Anyway, we can't know for sure that the subject will present itself at all. Not unless a shiny, new job crops up that looks, to J., much better than what he has now.

Until then I'll just curl into a lima bean ball and hope that nothing will come between me and my mistylushgraygreen city and fall asleep.