Proverbs 27, Verse 1
"Don't brag about your plans for tomorrow - wait and see what happens."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
It's 9:02.
In roughly an hour, I will be in bed.
In spite of the relentless, throbbing heat of the second floor of our house, I will sidle up close to my wife as I have done for ten-ish years and hold onto her as if she were a life-raft.
Because, basically, she is. A life-raft with glasses. And moles. I love to count her moles. On her leg, she has three moles that are aligned in an almost perfect diagonal. I like those three the best. There's a crescent moon-shaped one on her big toe. I forget if it's the left one or the right. I'm not good with left and right. They gave us numbers in first grade, and you had to put your number on every piece of paper you wrote on or drew upon, in the top, right-hand corner.
Top, right-hand corner.
My number was 16.
I wrote it on everything.
You're never too young to learn that, in this life; you're just a fucking number.
Tomorrow, I will go to work and stare at a screen for a long time. No one will tell me I have to write the number 16 on the top, right-hand corner of what I'm working on, but my employee I.D. number is 30014.
It's on my paystubs, so I know it's real.
Tomorrow I will do things and learn things and say things and I will say some stupid things and some insightful things and most of the things I'll say will pass for normal, banter, palaver, junk. It's symbolic of JUNK!
On Sunday I had some direction about Monday. But then Monday came and I did what I had to do for Monday and Tuesday, well, I just don't know.
I don't know about Tuesday.
There's a lot that I don't know.
There's a lot, probably, that you don't know either, but you're better at hiding it than I am, and I hate you for it. No, hate's a strong word. I detest you. No, I adore you. It's going to be okay. I love you. I love you all the time. I love you in the top, right-hand corner.
I am Number 16.
It was suggested to me today that I use my anxiety, channel it, use it as a springboard to thrust me into the work that I have to do. I liked that suggestion. I don't know how to do it, but I liked it. As I may have said before, I like suggestions, and I often take them. So don't suggest that I go fuck myself.
That was a joke.
That joke is symbolic of JUNK!
My mother used to love planning for tomorrow. She had a clothing chart that she would make every Sunday-- she'd sit herself down in the living room, cross-legged on one of those stupid marshmallow chairs that they just got rid of, and she'd take a spiral notebook and she'd make a list of what she was going to wear to work, Monday through Friday-- the navy blue blouse with the green leaves and the big orange blossoms with the green linen pants and the beige sandals. She even wrote down which earrings she'd wear, too. I don't know if my mother still makes clothing charts anymore. I don't know anything about her anymore. Not really.
If I had to guess, I'd bet that she doesn't make clothing charts these days. These days her life is filled with mourning the loss of her son-in-law, and helping to bring up her grandson and, when there's time, squeezing my babies in for a visit every now and again. She's tortured by ghosts, tormented by a very painful reminder that life blows-- a reminder she hadn't received in many decades. The seventies, eighties and nineties were good to her-- no, great. They were great. But it's been crash-and-burn time lately. Who can plan for tomorrow when you don't know what the fuck is going on today, or what the hell happened yesterday?
I became anxious in second grade. 64 math problems in 5 minutes. I wasn't Number 16 anymore, and I had to put my name, my real name, on the top of this paper and do 64 math problems in 5 minutes.
It never happened.
I always shut down.
Shivered. Shook. Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong.
Ring-a-ding-ding.
DING!
Time's up!
One time I got a zero. Didn't even try. Couldn't. Or, wouldn't. I don't know. Still. Ever get a zero on something? It's hard to get a zero, even in second grade.
Second graders shouldn't have to know anxiety. My thing is, if it's a thematic element in any given Woody Allen film, you don't need to be experiencing it at seven years old. But there it was.
And we always knew when the tests were coming, because that corduroy pants-wearing Nazi would tell us, and so I knew. But I couldn't plan. For tomorrow. There was only dread. No nightmares because there was no sleep, not for years.
These days, as the full-time workerbee father of twins, I can't help but fall asleep moments after I scoop my wife up in my arms. There's lots of waking up way before the alarm clock says, "Number 16? Time to shine," but, for a few moments, there is peace. Peace.
Let us have peace, in the top, right-hand corner.
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