I remember where I was when I heard that the first tower had been hit. I remember the chair I was sitting in. I remember the tabloid piece I was reading on the internet when I answered the phone and listened as my boyfriend told me to get to a television.
We watched in the conference room instead of the break room, but I have no idea why. Does that matter to you? Is it interesting to know where I was, when I saw the second tower hit?
I remember the suit I wore that day, it was supposed to be my first day out in the field with a real salesperson on a real sales call. We still went out that afternoon. Sunday is still the tenth anniversary of when I truly began my first career.
I don’t have the suit anymore. It was black. Does that matter to you? Is it interesting to you that I never wore it again but kept it for years?
I still remember the words we whispered to each other that night, as we held each other close. I remember the tears I cried as I imagined all of the people who would never hold their beloved again.
He and I no longer belong to one another, though at the time I could not fathom a life apart from him. Does that matter to you? Is it interesting?
I remember the anger. The outrage. The fear and uncertainty. Those things matter, because so many are still there. So many have yet to move on.
It’s why tomorrow many of us will be asked where we were, rather than where we are. So many are still there, and somehow always will be.
Another tragedy.
We had such potential to unite in the aftermath. So much opportunity as a nation to come together.
But we haven’t.
At all.
We’re still not getting anywhere.
So what does it matter where I was?
We’ve been very busy, around here.
We started demo in the guest bath this weekend, and along the way made a somewhat odd discovery behind the sunken medicine cabinet:
Oooh look! An escape hatch!
It’s probably best we didn’t know about this during one of those all night infant crying sessions, is all I’m saying.
So then! More things!
I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to start doing more stuff with Piper. We’re not ready to send her to preschool just yet for a few reasons, but at the same time I like the idea of having “projects” that we can do, and talk about, plan for and get excited about. So I’ve been pinning all of these cool ideas (kid related and not!) to a couple of my Pinterest boards, Stuff To Do and Stuff To Make over the last couple of months. Somewhere along the line I came across Preschool Alphabet and I was drawn to the simple and no pressure ideas.
We started on the letter A yesterday!
Yesterday we painted parts of a model airplane in the morning, and talked about things that start with the letter A. After Topher got home they put the plane together and cuteness inevitably ensued.
Today we’re headed to storytime again, hoping to avoid aging angry golfers, obviously, and we’ll be looking for a book about Alligators, to go with the clothespin alligators we’ll be painting after we get home.
We’re a one bathroom household for the next couple of weeks would be my guess. Aren’t we lucky that a certain alphabet enthusiast is super into taking showers right now? I think so too.
Also I’m having smartphone drama which means I am missing all sorts of adorable photographic opportunities! It’s super lame! I am completely dependent on technology!
Wednesday is StoryTime at our library, and this makes Wednesday one of our favorite days. As a one car family living in Central Florida, having an air conditioned, educational activity complete with age appropriate playmates less than a mile from our home, even in the heat of Summer, it’s something we rarely pass up.
This week Piper and I were on our way, as is our typical Wednesday morning routine, when I pulled the stroller up short before an opening in the fencing surrounding the golf course that occupies the middle of our neighborhood. I was alarmed by the speed at which a cart was approaching the path used by carts to cross the 4 lane divided street which runs through the heart of our neighborhood.
Let’s be clear: Over the last few months I’ve gotten used to carts careening through this opening, doing the “California Roll” through the sidewalk without so much as a glance in either direction for something crazy like, I don’t know… a pedestrian. Furthermore I’ve learned to press the button at the corner to cross the street and to wait for the “Walk” signal to appear on the opposite corner before venturing off the sidewalk, even when it looks as if no automobiles are present for miles. Even with the right of way so clearly in evidence we were almost clipped last week as we crossed the street.
By a law enforcement vehicle.
I wish I were joking.
All this to say that we’re used to waiting longer than should be considered our fair share for other more oblivious drivers of various vehicles to not only see us, but to obey the laws that supposedly should govern their actions once they do.
So this Wednesday, when I saw this golf cart tearing through the rough toward the path, I stopped. Well before I needed to. Giving the retiree driver more than 3 cart widths of room with which to be a jackass work.
Somehow out of the corner of his eye he must have spotted us, and he screeched his cart to a halt.
“Oh-ho! Babies have the right of way!” He called out, falsely jovial, as though he had seen us all along and was doing us an enormous favor by stopping to let us pass.
“That was always my understanding of pedestrian traffic laws, thanks.” I stated as I continued across the unbroken sidewalk, as had been my LEGAL RIGHT ALL ALONG.
I admit I didn’t use my sugar coated “Oh Golly, Thanks Mr. Big Important Man!” tone of voice, but I was also by no means rude.
As we continued down the sidewalk I could hear him, calling after me as he drove his golf cart across the street:
“Nice Attitude!”
(Me and Piper, we’re still walking. We don’t want to miss the beginning of stroytime, see. That’s when you get your name tag aka “sticker!”.)
“YEAH! REAL NICE ATTITUDE LADY!”
(Apparently my decision not to engage the jerk which walking alone with my child was not favorably met. We’re still walking.)
“YOU’LL GO FAR IN LIFE WITH AN ATTITUDE LIKE THAT!!”
(He’s now stopped his cart halfway across a 4 lane roadway. Piper and I are a minimum of 25 yards away from him at this point. I don’t exactly look back as we keep going, but I catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye.)
As we continue down the street I can hear him calling out again. He’s now all the way across the 4 lane road -with 6 foot median- and we’re at least 40 yards away now:
“YOU’LL GO REAL FAR IN LIFE, LADY! REAL NICE ATTITUDE!”
And all I can think, as I push my young daughter down the street toward the social activity that I bring her to every week, faithfully, so she can learn to share space and ideas with other human beings in a productive and respectful manner, is that some of us still have a lot to learn.
And I wonder if that older man (at least 70 years old) was very satisfied with himself, that day, for those minutes of his life that he spent shouting insults across a busy street to a young woman walking alone with her small child? I wonder if the man in the passenger seat of that golf cart was embarrassed to be with him? If he was, he said nothing that I could hear, though I admit it might have been difficult over all of the shouting.
And I think to myself what an interesting example I was given on that day. That day when a man, who undoubtedly thinks that he himself has come quite far in life, to be playing golf in the Florida sunshine on a Wednesday morning, zipping around in his battery powered cart with the sense of entitlement common to too many of various generations (not JUST my own, as many would like us to believe), chose to scream insults across half a football field as I worked to keep my child both educated and safe, convincing himself somehow that he was in the right.
However far I may or may not get in this life, I hope at some point along the way I’ve learned better manners than he has.
And I hope I teach them to my daughter.
Also traffic laws. You know. So she learns it’s not ok to kill people with golf carts and/or Honda Civics.
I’m in a state of waiting right now. I don’t wait very well.
I’m waiting for the heat to break so we can plant the garden and leave the house after 11 am.
Waiting for the weekend so we can start gutting the guest bath.
Waiting for naptime so I can sew cocktail napkins. Or pillow covers. Or photograph cocktail napkins or pillow covers.
Waiting for the school district to move the bus stop off of my corner so I can stop spying out my front window every morning waiting for some punk kid to step on my grass.
I wonder what they’re wating for, those kids. We’re a couple of weeks into the school year here, so during my morning spy sessions I’ve been watching the new ones. The sixth graders.
They’re so little! And I worry about them, remembering what it was like to go to middle school for the first time.
I wonder how their summers were, waiting to start a new school. I wonder if they were excited or scared or both.
They should be scared. Middle school is wretched. I wonder if they’ve noticed yet, or if they’re still waiting for it to get better.
Do you ever feel like you’re still waiting to get over something? Like middle school? A bad relationship? A friendship gone wrong? A fight with a family member?
Sometimes I think we’re all waiting, on some level, to wake up one day and be “done”; to be magically over whatever past trauma makes us go through our days feeling ever so slightly broken.
Even though it still feels too hot it’s time to pull the weeds up. Otherwise we won’t be able to plant.
I’m having one of those weeks.
One of those weeks where your wildest dreams seem simultaneously completely within reach and absolutely beyond imagining.
It’s a strange place to be.
We’re pretty used to being in the beyond imagining camp when it comes to these particular types of dreams for some time. So it’s a bit of a shock.
And it will probably go nowhere.
After all, most of the time, dreams don’t actually come true.
That’s just a fact.
Seeing as how I’ve yet to manifest super powers, wake up rich, blonde, incredibly skinny or even, for that matter, with Chris Pine lurking in my kitchen just waiting for me to request pancakes and scrambled eggs (seeing as Chris Pine’s dearest life’s ambition is to live in my kitchen, shirtless, waiting for me to order pancakes and scrambled eggs, obviously.) I’m confident in saying that most dreams do not, actually, come true.
But it’s nice to get, if nothing else, a peek behind the curtain of What Could Be.
It isn’t Chris Pine.
But it’s pretty amazing.
It’s one of those dreams that still feels crisp and bracing, like the very beginning of an adventure. You know, before the reality of blisters, forgotten cell phone chargers and the hassle of finding a cab in a strange city in the middle of the night in a strange city sets in. We’re still at that part where you’ve made it to the airport in plenty of time and have found the security line to be short and moving quickly.
The fun part.
And even if this isn’t the right time, it’s nice to get a reminder that someday we may even get there.
Someday.
Maybe.
