Skinny people are easier to kidnap. Stay safe. Eat cake. I read this admonition somewhere and I take it to heart.

Once, long ago when I encountered a dangerously disturbed older student moving toward our small learning group and menacing two of my knee-high innocent first graders, I reared up. Call it ‘Mama Bear’ syndrome, or ‘Outrage against the sheer effrontery and absurdity of it all’ or even ‘My Irish is up!’ I moved rapidly toward this student with every righteous intention. He took off running.

Later, I informed my frail and slightly shocked administrator that I would indeed have fallen on that obstreperous boy like a solid tree, squashing the twig. I meant it. Unsurprisingly, the bureaucrat offered something vague such as, ‘Well, we don’t want anyone to get hurt’.

Exactly. Try me again. So if you want to teach, if you really want to teach…eat cake. We’re harder to kidnap and we are not afraid of falling over…

To remember the specific detail, the forgotten temperament, the smaller person, the subtle color…that was everything. Drowning in the bigger picture, the never ending noise…the world which would not cease talking…it was time for the single petal, the nuanced emotion of a child’s face, vanished in a split second. To miss these details…in the end…meant missing absolutely everything important. They were desperate to paint, to breathe, to touch the lost second, to hear the unheard words…to feel the skin’s touch…the truth…

There was a time for all that…but then it became the time for just plain old simple living…the tying of shoelaces, the spreading of peanut butter…the perpetual dust…the need to develop a theology of the kitchen…

Another man. Another interaction: I see him bee bopping all over the front of his parked truck; windows down, music blaring. I walk across the parking lot, headed to my destination. He looks up, grins wildly and yells out his window, ‘I don’t care who sees me! When it’s a tune you like, you gotta listen, man!’

Something makes me stop. I stride over. ‘What are you listening to?’ He cranks it up. I say, ‘I don’t recognize it, I’m old school…man’. ‘Me too, me too…’ he grins. ‘But I really like this one, I’m old. I’m 49!’ I point at him, ‘I’m older!’ He guffaws loudly. ‘You don’t look it!’

At this juncture, I realize I’d probably better drift off…man. He starts up again. ‘I act like a seven year old!’ I find that I can’t help myself. I respond, ‘Well, I think like a five year old!’

This week’s theme has centered around my age, as I consider the recent conversation had with a neighbor, a retired marine who insisted that I could have been a marine as well. That was a circular conversation.

The man in the truck laughs. ‘It’s all good, man! I mean it’s not ALL good; people are getting sick and stuff, but most of it is (expletive)!’ I nod, ‘Could be, could be’. He continues, ‘I don’t watch the media no more; they control everything! It’s all (expletive)!’ I choose to end this conversation in a cowardly manner, ‘Could be, could be’. I start to wander back to my car, thinking I will shop later. Enough excitement for one afternoon.

He hops out of his truck, puts his blue mask on and heads in the opposite direction across the parking lot. He yells back, ‘I’m going home now, mow the lawn and have a drink!’ I think that what he REALLY said was, ‘I’m going home, having a drink and then I’m going to mow the lawn!’

Now that sounds to me like some trouble up ahead…man.

His final words echo across the lot as he yells, ‘We’ll see how shaky I am tomorrow’. With this statement, I feel safe to say that the drinking will occur first, followed by the lawn mowing.

I get back into my car and consider that I may need to stay home more…

Imperfection…the continual bane of the human experience. Attacking the problem today in a two-fold manner…by reading ‘The Song of the Lark’ by Willa Cather and discovering the ‘second self’…followed up with Psalms 8…’What are human beings, that You are mindful of them, mortals that You care for them?’

And therein lies true frustration, exhilaration, exhaustion and elation…a continual battle for an introvert. The longing to communicate, the driving desire to hide.

Living in the puzzled balance between Stupid and Sacred, Banality and the Beatific, Politics and Perfection, Hypocrisy and Holiness…riding a horse who keeps bucking…

I just rapidly scanned a magazine advertisement; fashion for women etc. Apparently, this season’s hottest accessory in the fashion arena is the clavicle.

I’ve had a clavicle bone for 59 years now. Most likely, I will have one until I die, regardless of haute couture trending.

Rejoicing in the knowledge that I can depend implicitly on wisdom from this particular industry…

‘Here. Taste this. It isn’t right’. The mug of steaming creamy coffee moves across the counter in my direction. I shake my head. ‘No, no…I don’t want to taste anything until I’ve had my own coffee’. ‘What is wrong with this?’ He grimaces. He moves toward the perfectly appointed cupboard, which I feel compelled to point out. ‘Don’t mess my cupboard. I’ve organized and cleaned everything. I know where everything is. It’s perfection. Don’t touch things’.

He lifts down a turquoise canister and clunks it on the counter. I open it up. ‘Where’s the sugar?’ He looks around. ‘In here, the sugar is in this canister’. I look into the heavy container. I look at his creamer. ‘It’s your coffee from Puerto Rico. It’s your sugar free creamer. Why are you looking for sugar with sugar free creamer? It’s the same stuff I always buy’. This question goes unanswered as he licks his finger and sticks it deep into the canister. I take a deep breath and look away. He yelps. ‘This is salt! It’s salt! Why is there salt in the sugar canister? Taste this!’ He points his salted finger at me.

‘No, no…I don’t want to taste or eat anything before my coffee’. I step back. ‘I have salty coffee’ he wails. I quietly take his mug and go to the sink. ‘We’ll start over. There’s enough fresh coffee still in the pot’. I pour a second cup. It only reaches three quarters of the way to the top. He looks at the mug skeptically. ‘I need a different mug’ he declares. ‘It’s all psychological’. ‘Yes, indeed’ I sigh looking at my cupboard. My perfect turquoise world looks a touch tarnished. He pours carefully the new coffee into the new mug. ‘Still doesn’t look right’ he mumbles. He pours it back. Now there is coffee on my counter.

I look at my ceiling. ‘Man, it takes a lotta work just to get the day started’ he states. I spread fresh cream cheese on my hot toasted bagel. ‘Hey, is this peanut butter okay? Taste this’. I shake my head. ‘No, no…I do not want to taste anything before I have had my coffee’. He moves over to my cupboard; my turquoise cupboard. ‘I’m putting this peanut butter back in your baking area. I don’t think it’s any good’. I stare at him. ‘Why do I want it in my cupboard if it is no good?’ He thinks about this briefly. ‘Well, maybe if you bake it it will be okay, even if it is no good. Plus, it wasn’t opened. There…I stuck it in there’.

I avert my eyes. I know I’m going back later to ‘fix’ the peanut butter in my well appointed cupboard and to switch out the errant salt and sugar. Later. Right now, I’m getting my coffee and bagel because I’m afraid there will soon be yet another taste offering…

A brief trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts…a jaunt through Harvard Square after all the rain. It is muggy. We are tired. The relentless damp steams off the leftover sidewalk puddles and settles on our faces and spirits.

Suddenly, he strikes up a lively conversation with two Harvard custodians…one from Honduras, one from Mexico and now he joins in bringing the twist of the island.

Surrounded by a thousand picture snapping visitors from Eastern portions of the world, I am odd woman out. I watch the last fat drops of silver rain plop off the ends of the branches hanging off the huge spreading tree under which the three kings stand and converse.

I listen and listen in the richly moistened elite air of Harvard Square. I hear the nuances and the differences within this linguistic circle of men and their conversation and I know for the first time I’m hearing a language which is no longer noise…

I used to think some things were odd; the woman standing at the corner of Central Avenue and North Clinton dressed in a heavy winter coat, a wool cap and boots…when it is close to 80 degrees; steamy hot. I used to find that odd.

At that particular corner, she stands only a few short blocks from where a specialty factory tailors $2,000 suits…worn by eager, energetic businessmen in Manhattan…only one block from the busy train station ferrying eager people on the Empire Express, around the vast bends in the rivers and into the rising canyons of cement and money.

The divergent paths will never cross…the over dressed woman who waves an illegible placard as she scuttles across North Clinton in the general direction of the red brick train station…and Manhattan. That’s odd. But these days, I no longer find it to be strange.

I think about her heavy, misplaced clothing. There is no transitional clothing for those who stand on the corner of Central Avenue and North Clinton. The journey is winter coats and boots, and then flip flops and t-shirts; nothing in between.

Spring is a luxury ill afforded. It’s winter or summer. It’s black or white. A confused placard or a $2,000 suit. The middle is a luxury too highly priced. The middle is a dangerous place. It should be a safe place, but it’s not. Now that’s odd…

Was there anything more glorious than sitting on the porch with a bowl of cold Caesar chicken salad and a whole lot of pickled red onions? She didn’t think so. From deep in the house came the faint strains of the Bach double violin concerto; the talented hands of Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh driving their bows over the strings, pulling life’s essence and exquisite beauty out of cat gut and wood. Marvelous. Was anything better?

She leaned back in the Adirondack chair and closed her eyes. ‘I wonder if Bach ate Caesar chicken salad and pickled red onions?’ She tried envisioning this. She couldn’t quite pull it together in her mind as she was drifting off in the heat; the porch was so cool, the neighborhood absolutely silent.

A slight breeze moved the wind chimes at the edge of the porch and the music inside the house wound down, both artists bringing Bach to a brilliant close with a flourish and a nod; all three musicians long gone now, yet the music was still there, still giving life, still stirring thoughts and emotions, evocative images from the memory of sound.

The whole nation should be seated on the front porch, eating cold Caesar chicken salad with heaps of red pickled onions. Heaps. There isn’t anything more glorious.