Recently, I engaged in a lengthy conversation with a young tike, a lad of four and one half years. We sat waiting together on the voluminously awkward leather couch in the lounge at the Hochstein music school. He told me all about himself and his family and that he ate a lot of ‘stinky’ cheese and he didn’t like it. I said I wouldn’t like it either, most assuredly.

He inquired as to whether or not I needed a picture drawn of myself and it turns out that I did. This happened four times during our interaction. It was a lengthy time together and we sat happily side by side on the squishing sinking couch, listening to the old creaking wooden floor sounds and the whining and cracking of the stairs upon stairs leading up to the upper rooms at the top of the old red brick building.

He gave me four crayon drawings of me seated on the couch. They were wonderful and I told him so. I told him they were good because they looked exactly how I felt; squashed and a little tired and smashed down by life.

I don’t think that he completely understood but we both laughed quite a bit.

I do not think that retirement or old age will require much if any adjustment on my part…

As I look down and see my husband’s white sock covered with spilled coffee grounds…and as I look up and see him standing there rather sheepishly, holding the coffee filter somewhat heavily and mostly askew…and as I witness more wet grounds on the kitchen floor and wall by the garbage bin, I say the only thing I can say…’Step away from the kitchen, sir…step AWAY from the kitchen’…

Without a doubt…Wednesday mornings during Covid in the school year became the most depressing; the weekly check in on missing students…’truancy case…CPS case…no, they supposedly moved to Florida, Grandma lost contact’. ‘No, that’s a truancy case…long term CPS case’.

‘What do we do about…? Who is actually accountable?’ ‘Um…actually, no one. There is no one…I think’.

‘Okay…they left materials on the porch and snapped a photo to prove they did it…the house was dark, no one answered the door’. ‘Ok…next class…long term truancy…nope, CPS…nope, no follow up’…’that phone number doesn’t work’…

We are losing these kids…

Raining all day long and the temperature was a shaky 45 degrees…spring in the city by the lake…and the reason we craved hot onion rings, jalapeno burgers and spicy chili in the evening…any notion of planting washed away in the deluge…

This is what is required to keep the two kids duly entertained. Lolly desires popcorn for supper. She sits squirming at the counter and we all join in and sing lustily, ‘Popcorn girl…she’s been living in her popcorn world!’…working in little snippets of Billy Joel’s influence, a bit of musical practice by matching pitches and staying on key, a rather scant and negligible attempt at nutrition, humor…and in due time…rejection by the little nymph seated at the counter. The discarded popcorn is thrown onto the kitchen floor. She ‘wants down’.

This incident leads to a brief lesson about cleaning up, Auntie’s house, what we do not throw onto the floor and more importantly, what we do not eat off the floor. All in all considering, it was a successful meal.

Re-defining success is a daily requirement around these parts. Everybody polka!

The old ‘I grew up with a rotary phone, I need my hand held’ just smoothed over a whole lot of confusion at Burger King. There was indeed, a lot of confusion.

We tried ordering through a new phone app. In addition to the app, there was a ‘plus add rewards’ category, followed by a ‘plus add offers’ opportunity and then a ‘would you like to start an account?’ moment. We pressed a number of keys and buttons and finally handed over the Iphone at the drive through window. Then we heard the confused employee being reprimanded for ‘taking a customer’s phone’…

In the end, we climbed out of the vehicle and went into the store to clear up the substantial confusion…and Eli decided to add an additional order of onion rings. Just in case.

We all laughed at the counter. All’s well that ended well…and I think we either got extra onion rings or we did not. Then Eli decided to download more food apps.

Hmmm…

Somewhere down the widening road leading to autumn…with no longer time for an early morning pause…an unfettered length of morning time and conversation…somewhere, there remains the memory of the almond chocolate croissant, the creamed coffee and the silence of the house. The house, quiet as it lives its own life…the shades, the sunlight on the porch…the whir of the dishwasher and the flowers opening up at the edge of the step…

A whirlwind trip through the Buckeye State…a view of the old homestead where I spent a child’s Christmas and ate homemade cherry pie while seated on the red leather ottoman. ‘Do you still feel the beginning of the flatness?’ someone asks me as I look at the white barns, the fields along the stretch of highway 90 headed West…the tippy toe edge of the hint of an invisible prairie…out there…somewhere…the endless wind calls me…the flax and the substantial breeze and the deep, deep smells of earth and hidden waters we don’t have in the East. The smell is thick. I taste the water in it. The road sparkles differently.

As I drive by the old home, I hear once again the mournful cry of the train…headed West…somewhere…out there while Grandma sings to brother who suffers with a bad sore throat and I am curled up on a bed…the light dims and fades. Grandma goes downstairs and there is subdued adult chatter, the scraping of plates…’Good night’ and ‘Good night’…and the train sobs through the reaches of Cleveland…heading West…out there, somewhere.

But today, for now…I must return East. I turn my back on the beckoning winds…they know me. I’ve been here before, countless times where the hidden waters lie beneath sod and gumption and land upon land, upon winsome land. I cross two state lines, driving back on 90. East…the barns are red again…gas prices rise steadily…the flatness forms back up into rolling hills and lush vineyards…rich and fallow…growing forever beneath the spreading, green trees, the corn fields where the ears are taller than I am…the watered East.

I return to the city on the lake…to my heart…far from the red leather ottoman…that cherry pie…the mournful train…home to the one I love…

‘We need to disassemble the bed, remove the box spring, fold up the frame, vacuum’…’yes, yes I know everything that has to happen before the delivery…have they called yet?’ ‘No, the delivery time is scheduled between 9am and noon’. He looks at the clock. He looks intently at the wall. He states firmly, ‘That needs to be painted!’

I plug in the vacuum. I shake my head as I begin to move the heavy machine around. ‘Nope, it’s too late…they could be here in a mere twenty minutes’. He’s staring at me. This is making me anxious. ‘We can’t remove curtains, rods, nightstands’…I take a deep breath. I have a sinking feeling this is going to happen, despite my protest. He has that look in his eye.

I resist with feeling. ‘We can’t…we CAN NOT have a brand new bed, frame and base set up against a freshly painted wall’. He jumps up. ‘We can do it. We can do it! It’s a calculated risk. When are they ever here on time for these deliveries?’

He’s gone; vanished down the stairs. He bellows from somewhere beneath me. ‘Where are the rollers?’ I take an even deeper breath and compose myself. ‘I don’t know!’ I yell back. ‘Wasting time, I’m wasting time…’ he scurries out into the garage and I hear the door slam. The door thuds again as he bolts back into the house. I look at the clock on top of the chifferobe. It’s 9am on the dot. There is no way.

He races back up the stairs. ‘Let’s go. Let’s go. We can do this!’ I have not yet eaten and I have not had coffee. This is one of those ‘adulting’ moments and I never like these events. Now, I’m forced to ‘get on my hustle’ because he is moving and a grooving. The tsunami has breeched the walls. I’m going to drown while being run over.

I’m up on the ladder in bare feet, pulling down heavy curtains, catching the rods before they clang down onto the windows and ledge. ‘Ugh…these need to be washed’. ‘So do the windows and the ledges’ he offers helpfully. I quickly read the tag on the curtains as he swipes paint vigorously up and down the wall in large sweeping gestures. ‘It says ‘dry clean only”. I look at him and then down at the dusty curtains. This is turning out to be a morning of calculated risks. Perhaps I can gamble with the curtains as well.

‘Lucky for us this color matches perfectly’ I hear him mumble as he continues. I shake out the second curtain panel. ‘Yes, well…neutral colors work well. We can build out from those…’ my voice trails off as I look at the other side of the room. ‘Dust, dust, get to dusting. 9:20am…we are NOT going to make it. We might possibly make it’. He paints faster and with great fury. I jump down off the ladder and run to the laundry room. I throw the curtains into the washer. ‘Be blessed. See you on the other side!’ I silently wish the curtains well as they embark on a new adventure. Normal cycle. Cold water. Slam the door. Go.

He’s painting madly and precisely like a well oiled machine. There are only two small splotches of paint on the carpet. I grab my trusty packet of wipes from the bathroom. The paint comes right out. I bend over and begin to swipe swiftly along the baseboard edges…dust, swipe, clean. ‘Where’s the vacuum?’ I step around him, lug the contraption across the room and begin to vigorously vacuum the one corner. He steps back to admire his work. ‘I do like to admire my work’ he states simply. I clear my throat. The clock on the chifferobe says 9:45. I look at my phone. No call or text. We might make it. I remember to breathe.

I grab the second set of curtains, throw them into the laundry room, open several windows to facilitate paint drying, run downstairs to turn off the air conditioner…back upstairs to vacuum. No phone call, no text. It’s 10am. At 10:15 he announces loudly, ‘I’m done!’ I look carefully up and down the wall. He’s done it indeed. Amazing actually. I dust the second nightstand table and drag it off to get it out of the way. I return to continue vacuuming while he admires his work.

We manage a solid twenty minutes for coffee and cinnamon muffins. My head is spinning slightly, which may be the result of delayed caffeine; but…we did it. With a loud screech, the delivery truck pulls up. Two men hop out and in ten minutes are hustling up the stairs schlepping all sorts of angled things. I hear…’Oh wait. Yes, I’m Puerto Rican. Are you Puerto Rican?’ ‘Yes, I am’…and the conversation speeds up and explodes over into rapid Spanish. I tread carefully upstairs to survey the action.

‘I hear he painted this wall just now!’ The delivery man chuckles and looks at me. ‘Yes, yes…he gives me a heart attack when he does this sort of thing’. He laughs. ‘Well, we Puerto Ricans wait until the very last minute to do stuff’ and he laughs again as he sags and rests for a brief moment on the edge of the huge box.

This I know. This…I know.

The curtains survive their surprise wash cycle and are already hanging back up; drying in fresh August air. The clock tells me that in a mere 2.5 hours we ‘accomplished the world’ as he puts it. Time to sit down…

Remembering one of the better Zoom moments during Covid: I open up the link for all the students to enter the virtual classroom. Lo and behold…Carmen Miranda is on Zoom.

My girl is all decked out…sporting ear buds with her head all wrapped up to a glorious height, styled to the Heavens with a tightly tied red, white and blue towel.

All we’re missing are the bananas…