Past, Future and Presents

The deadline for submissions of pictures for the high school yearbook was at hand, and the boy had pushed off deciding.

I didn’t want to pressure him  … again. But this felt like a momentous occasion and I wanted him to take it seriously.

He was keen to make cheeky jokes about his future, binging on beer and games of chess at college as he slouches toward adulthood.

In addition to The Official Portrait SelectionTM … There was also the matter of a message from home, consisting of an uplifting missive about this milestone and a photo from his childhood.

Now, some of the blame was mine, of course. It didn’t help that despite taking a bazillion photos during his formative years, I hadn’t managed to create physical albums for him to thumb through. Instead, I had to comb through The Cloud and find a smattering I could send him through text messaging.

“Just pick something. I don’t care.”

To which I replied with the inclusion of one particularly ADORABLE picture of him (age 6) displaying a copy of The Dangerous Book For Boys with his scrawny, Sharpie-tatted arms akimbo; and wearing a newsboy cap sideways (so it gave the impression of a beret).

“OHMYGODNO!”

How prescient of me, Right?

Two things can be true simultaneously: 1) High School IS NOT the best years of your life, and 2) You may stumble on this dusty yearbook in an old cardboard box some decades from now and thumb through its pages with a minor amount of fondness.

 

Because in the words of everyone’s mother since time immemorial: “You never know.”

This is why when he narrowed the parameters of what he would consider an acceptable image from his formative years: Infant or toddler photos only – no evidence he had ever attended school. And nothing - NOTHING - that could be construed as having any degree of foresight into his temperament. The happy, silly-faced boy who matched the ideal of a happy childhood … was just too embarrassing.

He sat at my side as I fired up the computer, and began scrolling through the old online archives.  

There was Newborn Him, wrapped burrito-like in a blanket … one eye squinting.

And Infant Him propped upright in a basket … the other eye squinting.

Oh, and Six-Month-Old Him reflected in a mirror, his tongue sticking out like a rascal who was going to be (Capital T)rouble. 

“OMGODSOCUTE.”

“Did you ever take photos of me that were just … I don’t know NORMAL?”

I quickly swiped past the one of Toddler Him howling in delight just before dropping a cell phone into the dog’s water bowl.

That’s when I landed on a photo of Toddler Him and His Papa, my father. It harkened to a scene in my head from "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." The two of them snowshoed, trudging along a cross-country ski trail. They had exchanged hats. My dad had the boy’s Nordic earflap hat perched on top of his head, while my son struggled to see through the vintage ski cap that made Anabel Moriarty famous.

We were both silent.  In my mind, the picture could have been a scene out of a Robert Frost Poem: My father with my son, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

“This is the one,” he said with a catch in his voice. "You can send that one ...

“Unless you find one of us together at the pub with a beer, playing chess.”  

Many happy returns

 “I chose wrong,” said the boy as he strode through a crosswalk, dodging cars and trailing behind. The three of us, now in full jog, were headed toward a wall of sliding glass doors. Truth be told, her brother hadn’t needed much convincing. 

When his sister, freshly back from college, asked if he wanted to join us for some pre-holiday shopping, he smiled slyly and asked, “Whose car are we gonna take?”

“Dad’s. He’s joining us, too”

The menfolk were game even though she had warned them the quest would involve all manner of things that she knew might be irritating; things like darting to various goods stores, sorting through women’s clothes and cosmetics while visiting one particular department store she would insist on pronouncing with a flourish. 

Her brother would chaff at the sound of it. 

We laughed. He laughed. And the doors swung open. In we went — our family. 

I grabbed a handbasket as she perused the first bank of merchandise … an island of misfit toys.

Their father was the most self-protective; he grabbed a double-decker cart, declaring his mission would be to corral all the things we’d managed to forget during three trips to the grocery store over the span of two days and headed toward grocery items.

The boy hung back as if straddling a fence … should he go with us past the “unmentionables”  or should he go with his father toward electronics?

The Ys disappear… only to reappear In phone calls seeking our locations, and then in person a few aisles later. 

“Again, I feel like I have chosen the wrong path,” the boy announces as he tugs at the handle of the basket I am lugging around, indicating by a delicate force the universal language of chivalry.

He will make himself useful by carrying the load.

 “I CAN ALSO show you the forty-six-thousand-inch TV dad would like SOMEONE to fit down the chimney.”

And so we spent the better part of an afternoon chasing each other down aisles looking for hot chocolate and cozy socks. 

Fielding phone-call requests for guidance from the pet food department (yes, Virginia, there is a Kibble Clause, and also there is more than one aisle of dog food brands).

Sending text directions to the store, and more specifically, the parts of the store we had migrated since last he saw us.

And recreating the viral videos we’ve all of the shoppers in search of something fantastic …. Like “a reindeer sculpture that is tiled in disco ball mirrors but rolling on its back” … and finding the very last one in stock.

Of course, we left most of the stores empty-handed. Somehow, the joy we had of being together shopping barely translated to sales. But all was not for naught.

We had broken the ice. Gotten our feet wet in the shallow end. And retreated to a warm car and laughter.

We may not have said YES to the faux-topiary dog sculpture made almost entirely of astroturf, but we managed to cross a few things off of the list. We even found a few reasons to make a happy return. 

Read ‘em and sweep

The girl’s face lit up my phone smack-dab in the middle of a random Tuesday.

I didn’t panic. 

I switched my audio to speaker and perched the phone on the edge of a table so I could continue to push a broom with both hands.

I had been doing busy work … pushing dust and debris into little piles around a cement floor as I waited for a technician to arrive, who would tend to the more necessary work of the enterprise. 

She had been texting me with a litany of minor annoyances while I pecked out a word or two between sweeps. 

I understood that she had been struggling with registering for next semester’s classes and that she was taking a break from one of forty-seven thousand other things she does in any given week. She just needed to let off steam.

“Chell-ooooo,” she sang with a relaxed and happy tone, signaling that this rare phone call was more about efficiency than venting end-of-term grievances. “It’s just easier to talk than type,” she said with a labored sigh. All the words she had planned on typing would have cramped her hands if not necessarily her style.  

Of course, I was overjoyed to hear her voice.

She seemed in a good place: excitedly annoyed about the reality of her surroundings and wanting to debrief. There are so many glitches in this eternal matrix of matriculation. She unleashed a torrent of words that, had I been fluent in … *waves hands wildly* …  whatever it is she studies that is well above my Intelligence Quotient.

She is a wonder, and I have no doubt she will figure out the snags in her system.

I thought about the beauty of her enthusiasm as she flitted from topic to topic like a bird gathering seeds.

“Oh hey, check your phone. I’m sending you a picture.”

It’s a snowflake. The kind that’s folded and cut out of simple office paper. It is hanging from some artificial greenery with a loop of white curling ribbon. 

“What is that?” I ask, ready for the most obvious answer to be her response. “A snowflake, you dork.”

She is still able to translate Mom pretty fluently.

“Work has an angel tree. I always had so much fun when we’d pick them off the tree at school.”

She picked someone she understood completely: A teenage girl who needed a hat and gloves but wanted make-up and the funds necessary to shop for herself.

“The saddest things I think I ever saw were the gifts we volunteered to wrap from the well-meaning folks who donated to church fund drives. Regifted cosmetic sets with little-girl colors or dried-up old nail polish testers. The add-ons or freebies, that are only meant to entice consumers to upgrade their purchases. Nothing would have been better.”

So she is spending her lunch hour and part of her savings to build a care package out of the things that are rarely discounted. Perhaps it’s just stuff, but it’s also a welcome distraction while she’s waiting for her tech support to arrive.

 

Rhode trip

For days, a flurry of text messages pinged my phone at all hours. 

College roommates had planned an impromptu “Rhode” trip, and they asked me to join. 

The joy was palpable. Our phones parsed potential itineraries that included 360º views of vacation rentals, and menus of interesting restaurants, wineries, and clubs. Did we want to do any Historic Homes tours or scenic trails? They were all within walking distance. 

I answered every text with what I hoped would sound like an excited amenability rather than reserved detachment. 

Or worse. Outright fear.

It’s not that I didn’t care what we did, it’s just that I was happy to go along with anything … even if it was outside my comfort zone.

Like … yeah …I’m older now … and my body has delineated new and lower tolerances for things like noise and red wine, and it’s been a minute since I helped these ladies close down a night club … but I think we’re mature enough now to make some accommodations.

Even though I am still the oldest at …  twenty-seven.

Also, I checked: The bars all close at 1 a.m. posing no risk that we would find ourselves wandering around the downtown, in some state of inebriation, looking for all-night diners at 4 a.m.

I haven’t seen them much over the years, but when we do get together, it strikes me as stunning how little these women have changed. And not just on the outside. They have the energy of teenagers and the same verve for the excitement of life.

But as the approaching date drew near, the text exchanges stopped.

Fear struck my heart. 

The election?

I scoured their social media sites. A digital detective looking for clues. No sign of political leanings. None at all. 

Unlike mine.

What if they voted for TFG?

What if we couldn’t coexist in an off-season VRBO?

What if I couldn’t move forward with bygones?

What if it’s too soon to try?

I told my husband … maybe I would bag the weekend. Feign and illness. Pay my share and see myself out?

But as I was planning my exit, a new flurry of plans erupted. Arrivals, departures, carpooling specifics. The weather looks fine. Maybe we can stay an extra day. 

Before I could say I was feeling feverish, I was feverishly agreeing to all of it.

And somehow, within those few seconds, I was back in our old apartment. Remembering who we were: different in almost every way, but strong, vibrant, and bonded by the experiences we shared. So many I had forgotten about. So many that were clearly etched.

I was always the stand-off-ish emo-girl, fretting about the world going to hell in a handbasket. And they were always the free and fun-loving ones, who kept drawing me out of myself. 

We never even so much as the thought of forgiving another’s trespasses, since we hadn’t let them fester. Our differences weren’t something we ever really needed to overcome.

For two days, we ate and drank, laughed and cried, and we walked on cliffs instead of eggs.

It was glorious. And I was grateful to be there.

November surprise

Before I was bereft, I was annoyed.

No one wanted to cook, so I improvised. I made "sammiches": toast, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and cheese.

I had been feeding the washing machine all evening and the kitchen sink was piled precariously with dirty dishes.

I finished my meal between the first and third time I let the dog out into the backyard to chase the shadows brought to us by the wind and the return of Eastern Standard Time.

I cheekily vowed an end to the household assumption of clean dishes and laundered attire until they noticed such   assumed niceties were gone. Maybe this time it would stick.

A strange calm came over me after the polls closed and the returns trickled in.

The numbers started to add up around midnight, then they flooded the room.

The outcome didn’t feel like a surprise, but the numbness I felt about it, did.

Some have called the election of a man who ran on a platform of racism and misogyny, who acted brutishly and unscrupulously at every turn, and who has been called unfit and a fascist by his former aides, was … unfathomable.

I had fathomed. More than once.

And though I still believe that my fellow Americans possess the potential to be intrinsically good, if not always consistent in deed or speech, I similarly believed that people would listen to reason and be on the side of basic, if not always enumerated, rights.

I don’t believe that last part now.

Not after opening Facebook the next day and seeing a post from one of the nicest ladies I thought I knew, congratulating America for choosing to be great again by closing borders and cleaning house.

So often, we hear that if we want a better country, we need to be better citizens. This sounds hollow, especially as the civic gains of the last century—the ones that inspired the idea of American Exceptionalism—are steadily being rolled back.

Our City upon a Hill will have only  decrepitude to show for its years ... its integrity degraded and all remaining luster dimmed by gaudiness.

I don’t believe there is anything the Democratic Party could have done differently … whether it attempted to be more populous or more centrist, or if it leaned further left, or courted conservatism. We can’t stay mum about the ideals we have long stated we share, such as the rule of law.

I can’t believe it when the choice between candidates was as clear as a career prosecutor or a convicted criminal.

By the strength of the election numbers, it is indisputable that the real America is Trump’s America now.

I spent most of the day after the election tuning out people with microphones who sought to make sense of the aftermath … like normalizing a car that had broken through a living room wall by making it a couch.

Perhaps we can admit mistakes made in a game of politics, but I will never agree there is blame to go around.

There is right and wrong just as there is fact and fiction.

But the fight against injustice and cruelty is perpetual.

That’s when my phone rang.

It was an auntie … on my mother’s side. The “bougey” one from D.C. The one I disdainfully acknowledged as a teen but who I relish now.

She is the one who holds steady.

“Do you have time to speak?  How are you doing? Thank you for sending the photographs of the kids. …. Wow, they look so grown.”

 

She is busier than I am at the moment. Calling between Zoom book clubs and poetry readings.

She tells me she doesn’t have long to chat. She has a friend who is struggling with some tough health news, and they are meeting soon to talk about poetry instead of politics. She just wanted to check in with me.

Neither of us is thrilled about the election.

I don’t try to pick her considerable brain on what to expect this time. I know. But she surprises me and tries to pick mine:

"How do we move forward," she asked, not expecting an answer.

But I had one ready. Something she had said to me eight years ago.

“I have come to believe that all we can do is work on being kind and focus on being of service. Just like you are doing with your friend.”

She thanked me for being her “counsel“ before she headed off to do her part in the service of kindness.

After reconnecting, I went back to the solace of work. Saddened anew that until the sun would continue to rise for some of us, and while it does our lives would resume as if nothing had shifted.

I would end my silent strike by folding the laundry and attending to the dishes left in the sink.

The job ahead is not the same as before, but it’s still there.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ding, Dong, vote

We stood in line outside the polling place – one of two in the county dedicated to early voting. The line wasn’t budging. We shifted from one foot to another, trying to remain cool and calm. 

My husband isn’t one for standing around “doing nothing.” 

I remind him, using my best ad-libbed impersonation of Rose Castarini,  “Our civic duty is not Nothing. Te amo.”

He smiles and checks the weather on his phone.

Generally, he tries to avoid the likelihood of stagnation whenever possible.  He harrumphs whether he’s caught in traffic or on line in the grocery store, and it irks him so much he will sus out (with technological precision) the exact time he would face the least amount of congestion for any given task.

At no time during the preceding nine days, he surmised, could we just breeze on into the municipal building and vote straight away, since everyone in the county would find themselves bottle-necking here or there if they wished to cast an early ballot.

He was placating me and my heightened sense of superstition.

We were traveling. What if we got into a horrifying collision with amnesia and couldn’t drag ourselves to the polls (or even remember where they were)?

What if there was some other emergency? One that took us far away from home. Or a pipe burst and one of us would have to take turns damming the household flood with our fingers so we could each cast a soggy vote on election day.

Better to be safe than sorry.

That’s also what we were thinking as we waited. Twelve minutes had elapsed since the people ahead of us advanced. 

Be careful. Don’t look at anyone directly. And don’t say anything that would cause a scene. We don’t know whose voting for whom, though we furtively try to size each other up,

Without slogans emblazoned somewhere on our persons, we could be affiliated with anyone.

So we talk about the weather, and how hungry we are, and what restaurants are open on Wednesday. We wonder if we have anything to cook.

We are still seemingly anchored into place.

A man with a badge clipped to his shirt pocket walks among us to let us know we shouldn't worry. Anyone in line at 8 p.m. will still be able to cast their ballot tonight. 

“We’re not usually this slow, but there’s a glitch with the printer. I’m certain it will be fixed soon.”

The news seemed comforting until I consulted my wristwatch and learned we had more than an hour until we reached that threshold. It didn’t cause any revolts.  No one broke ranks, and the line remained placidly in a single file.

 Finally, a person exited the building.

And then another.

Two more would leave before our line lurched forward.

When we got closer, I stepped over the threshold, uncomfortably close to the strangers ahead of us. They didn’t seem alarmed by my lack of boundaries. Maybe they understood it was just my desire to hurry things along.

And then a friend emerged from the voting room, looking a little dazed.

“I don’t know why they gave me two ballots,” he joked. 

My husband follows his lead like a good sidekick: “I guess you’ll have to come back tomorrow and see if you win the lotto.”

The ballots are printing out like poo from a goose, now and we have to say our goodbyes.

As soon as I have my ballot in-hand, there is a new backup. This time at the vote tabulator.

The same guy who walked the line earlier was on the job now to get the bell to ring again.

“Won’t be long now.”

The jinx

Not long after the woman at the reception desk checked us in, she offered to schedule the boy’s sixth-month cleaning.

I hesitated. The moment elongated as my mind scanned through a litany of concerns I was compelled to tick off on an imaginary punch list, which, I’m not too proud to admit, not only includes worries about potential scheduling conflicts and also a host of involuntary superstitions.

This preemptive searching for open calendar entries ahead of the appointment at hand - which was just the routine x-rays and cleaning, scheduled six months earlier … at check-out.

As I scrolled through my phone’s calendar, my hands felt a little clammy, it seemed altogether possible that this might be THE THING that jinxes his 17-year record of being cavity-free.

It was a thought I suppressed using past history and hopeful thinking (his doctor has ALWAYS joked with us about the evenness of the terrain of his teeth, and how that means it’s unlikely the boy would ever need sealants or have trouble with the areas of the mouth in other mere mortals would find to be the cavity-prone zones.

I took deep breaths as I scrolled through my calendar, and swallowed as I accepted a day and time similar to the here and now.

“You can go back with him if you want.”

I have never enjoyed this part of parenting. Sitting in a corner chair of an exam room, holding my breath and waiting for the let-down while I listen to dialogue somewhere in the middle of a familiar animated movie, but neither of us has committed to memory.

I listen to the questions about the number and duration of daily brushings, and the half-truth he tells about the consistency of his morning brush and the evening floss.

“Does he still wear his retainer?”

Oh, I hope so. 

He receives the same advice as last time, and time before that: “Take extra time at the gum line. Close your mouth a little when you are scrubbing the molars.”

Honestly, I feel pretty good as the hygienist collects the tools and heads for the door. You are ready for the doctor, she almost sings as she exits. 

I have stopped trying to gauge her expressions. I couldn’t see a furrowed brow under the mask and cap unless I were obnoxiously close. My heart rate has returned to normal. My shoulders are substantially lower than my ears and I have stopped bouncing my knees to my mind’s playlist of atonal jazz.

When the doctor strides in with the practiced ease, my smile is genuine. Nothing in his voice worries me as he dictates letters and classes and occlusions and eruptions to the assistant.

“But unfortunately .…  it does look like he has a very tiny cavity in the back molar. Nothing to worry about, but it will need to be filled. We’ll get you back here in a week or two. No problem.”

“Is this your first adult cavity?”

“Well, it was a good run.”

I am relieved no one sounds too disappointed. 

Especially as I think - but don’t list - any of his recent dietary changes, particularly his newfound adoration of Arizona Arnold Palmer’s may be the culprit. 

That’s a conversation for later.