‘My goodness, you’re tall’, he said while reaching across the table length for a cocktail napkin. ‘I mean tall in a good way…I mean’. He faltered slightly.

‘Thank you’, she replied. ‘I work hard at it’. He looked at her. ‘Work hard at what?’ He seemed puzzled. ‘At being tall’, she countered, reaching for her own napkin. ‘I work hard at being tall’.

He looked down sheepishly at his plate and spent what felt to him to be an inordinate amount of time working out the pattern of food spread in front of him. Dip, chips, min-sandwich, over priced crackers, non-descript glob of cheese spread; looking up shyly, he tried again.

‘So, what do you do?’ She turned slightly to the left of him and glanced out over his shoulder at nothing. ‘I work hard at being tall’, she said. ‘I work very hard’.

It was the sort of conversation which at the root of things, found itself rather far down the twisting rabbit trail of ‘I’d rather be anywhere else but here’.

She announced, ‘Perhaps today I shall learn to fly or to spin sugar webs’. She opted for flight, and in her mind she was already gone…

I was caught up in the aesthetics of the matter, not the practicality.

He could not eat his breakfast…so graciously wrapped, carried and presented to him in his shop. He could not eat because his hands were covered in grease.

The thought of providing him napkins slid through my mind as shilly shally and flim flam; wilted away with the promise of spring and the excitement of fine porcelain.

This is why he builds, and I build differently…

I’ve gotten used to the bend in the road; the car knows the way now after a decade…first a left, then a right, then a left and another left and the car and I exit the development together. It is exactly 10 years to the day since we closed on this house and began making it our home. We completed the details with the lawyers in the middle of a snow storm. One attorney made it on time to the meeting; a journey north of more than 70 miles. I drove a mere 10 miles in city traffic and was forty-five minutes late. The snow and the swaying of the car, road conditions and the wind’s direction all contributed to my tardiness; our attorney waited patiently with the woman representing the construction company and we all eventually found each other in an overheated waiting room and signed copious sheets of paper and it was done.

Upon exiting the building, to celebrate I clambered up a mountain of snow recently plowed back over into the corner of the asphalt parking lot. We drove home in the heavy wet snow.

In a decade the walls have settled deeply. In the first year, there were one or two wall seams between sink and plaster which stretched suddenly and oddly. The house took her time breathing, seeming to hold in her air for the first eight months; afraid to believe she could stand firmly and steady in all of her newness. She exhaled slowly, slowly…then one day during the 11th month, she gasped, gave a slight burp and shudder and lowered herself down heavily on the foundation for good.

There was only one small crevice in the garage floor, a small nail pop in one of the walls…nothing really; just a quiet message from the house to us…that she was comfortable, content to rest if we were. Painting and mounting pictures with nails could now commence safely.

A new car in the garage, and then a bright red pick up truck; we’ve lived through a decade of bill cycles, and the vagaries of Rochester Gas and Electric, along with the realization and gratitude for cheap and plentiful water in this state located by the banks of Lake Ontario.

Our neighbor, a retired navy man disappeared during the first few winters but came back in the spring, chatting quietly with Eli on the front lawn as the two plotted their summer yard work. The pumpkin patch I attempted early on remained a heap of rotting pumpkins, never showing willingness to spring into fresh new pumpkins. A neighbor asked me if I gardened and I answered truthfully, ‘No’. But I was willing to try my hand at it and that has counted for something. We made the land our own. We made the house proud.

I watch the two men plotting together in the front. They stand with weapons ready; a hoe and a rake and a jauntily placed cap of some sort on the head of my husband. Two men contra mundum. The wind chimes bang up against the freshly painted porch post and I hear the other streets blossoming…

It was that old adage which caught her up on that early March afternoon. ‘A fool and his money is soon parted’.

And so it was, she thought. She looked down at the ledger lying on the table. This book, these pages and lines were a poignant, nay, even lovely reminder and an example of the human condition.

She stretched a bit and yawned. ‘We are all in various stages of foolishness, it would seem’ she said to no one in particular.

I sat on my glasses last night. It was brilliant. Brilliant as in masterful, precise, delivered with the exacting of a drone strike. Truly artful. Or as my husband put it, ‘Bullseye!’

The only collateral damage was my pride.

Both stems were taken clean off with the mini screws still intact. The decorative crystals and pearls were unscathed and unscratched. The glass lens were unbent and unbroken…staring up at me with a sort of jocular air having gained independence from the stems.

It was an excellent, precise strike.

When I visit the repair shop, I am not going to explain this damage as masterful. I may not even admit to it.

It’s fake news, as far as I am concerned…

To remember the specific detail, the forgotten temperament, the smaller person, the subtle color…that was everything. We were 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.

We were desperate to paint, to breathe, to touch the lost second, the unheard words…the skin’s touch…the truth…

The next time someone suggests I join a ‘Community circle’, I would like to make a counter offer.

In a heartbeat, I would join a crop circle. I suspect a large number of teachers would willingly join a crop circle. It’s amazingly close to our lived experience and daily work lives.

We’re not sure exactly how we got here. We may be trapped. We’re most likely surrounded by aliens.

I’m good with it.

Carry me on my way…o rambling road…for where you stride, is my abode. Whether brick on brick with sturdy, heated walls…or by a rain-sodden portico with scalloped edges…I go where you go and rest in your dwelling.

For my people have become your people and your family, mine.

A pegged tent driven hard by life’s rain or at the blue edge of wealth’s offering…I saunter side by side and hand in hand, together with you.

Carry me on my way…o rambling road, for where you rest, is my abode.

And then…early on a March morning…I heard a mourning dove…