face pressed up against the glass

I’ve seen the anniversary of the fire coming for some weeks now; I would say I’m mostly okay with it personally, but it causes a lot of worry about my mom, my daughter, and a lot of thinking. I am already prone to too much thinking.

Last week I stopped at a red light and a hearse pulled up next to me, with a casket in the back. You don’t see this; mostly, they’re in a procession, with cops and lights and no stops. They don’t just stop next to you at a light. I was vaguely horrified at the situation; did I need more reminders?

The song on the radio ended, and a new one started: Talking Heads, Burning Down the House. My jaw hit the floor … and then I smiled, and then laughed. It’s great, and I’ve felt weird playing it deliberately in the last year. I turned the radio up, and the light went green. Time to go; things to do.

I went to an ice cream parlor; homemade ice cream for 50 years or something like that. Closed for a few years, it just reopened with a line all the way down the block. As I walked out a kid of about ten walked in, wearing a pinstripe fedora and carrying an Etch-a-Sketch. I think a hole ripped in the fabric of time and space and slipped this place through to our side, and I’m completely okay with that.

I blinked, and eight months flowed by.

I blinked, and eleven years flowed by. It took eleven years for the dates to match up, for the day my father died to be that day again. Some years I am distracted by the whirlwind that passes for April, but this year, I lived the week again. I would close my eyes, and I was there. I would open my eyes, and be both here and there. I would open my eyes, and be both then and now. I’m sure there is an equation to explain that, but I don’t know it.

I blinked, and next week my daughter will be six. This week, my son will be three.

I recently reconnected with an old friend. We were twelve when we knew each other; it has been twenty-four years since then. How can this be? When we were children, our parents seemed old. Or at least grown up. But we are not old. I will not speak for my friend, but I do not feel grown up. But now I am the parent. Perhaps I am old. Perhaps old is not what I thought it was. Perhaps these seemingly mathematical impossibilites are just more equations I don’t know.

While my eyes were closed winter flowed by. There are tiny leaves on my apple trees, and the beginnings of life on my maples. But nothing yet on my ash tree, from which I take my cues. It is in no hurry.