Without fail you’ve wanted to know how my sore throat felt. Without fail, you’ve felt the aches and pains and sneezes lurking. Without fail, you’ve asked how things were going, asked when the test results would be in.
Because you’ve always cared to know, and you’ve always held your arms around me.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
“Hey Trudy?” I asked as I walked into the dining room to retrieve my (lost) cup of coffee.
I had this theory, and I wanted to confirm it with my fair and industrious spouse.
My theory was that there’s some kind of energy conservation principle at work in moments of duress — that I turn inward, shutting off the outside world, giving myself strength to focus on the task at hand (say: nausea from chemo, radiation burns, incisions, lack of sleep… the setback and humiliation of failing a certification test). My theory was that somehow my brain knows it’s stressed out and unconsciously chooses to conserve energy. That was my theory. I was curious whether or not it squared with Trudy’s observation.
She didn’t look up from her phone.
I took a sip of lukewarm coffee and continued. “Would you say that I react to the stress of a test like I react to the stress of being sick?”
Her head instantly jerked upwards, and her eyes opened wide. “No!” she said. “You did not react the same as when you were sick!”
We looked at each other.
“You do fine when you’re sick,” she said, “but you were massively stressed out from this test!”
So much for my theory. I guess that for many reasons it’s really fortunate that I passed.
image src: NASA/JPL/Juno – jupiter blues
Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate…
T-2 hours and counting… TODO: shower, eat, drive to the test site. (Take pencils. Take eraser. Take admission ticket. Don’t take anything else.)
…learn to labor…
Right. Let’s do this, shall we?
Somewhere in Kentucky there are three kids doing their own things.
My cousin’s kids. The Leader of Cheers. That Lady. The Runner of Races. Doing their own things.
“Are you going to your happy hour,” Debra asked.
I had been sitting in the office after having turned in my monitors and my laptop and my keyboard and my mouse, after having taken my Philodendron down to the car, after having cleaned my desktop and the counter where the Philodendron has been sitting for years. I had been reading my phone, because I got all my check-out activities finished, and I still had an hour and a half to go with, quite literally, nothing left to do.
I looked up at Debra.
“Your happy hour,” she said, “Aren’t you going?”
“Well, it doesn’t start until 4:30,” I said. (It was 3:50.)
“4:00,” she said.
We walked over to her desk and looked at her calendar, because mine was closed up in my turned-in laptop that we sitting on the counter in Derrick’s office. She took a look. Sure enough: 4:00. I was going to be late for my last hurrah.
Let’s just say that’s par for the course.
“David. David. David,” Brett had said a week before. “Say it’s not true.”
I couldn’t say that. He was gracious in expressing his regret.
“I’ll schedule a happy hour at B.B.Rover,” he said, “and I’ll invite all the folks who love you.”
There was a flattering turnout. Somewhere between a dozen and twenty people: some who came to briefly say good bye, others hung out with me for two and a half hours. They bought me sours and fries. And we talked and laughed and offered cheers and finally said our goodbyes as we walked to our cars, promising to stay in touch.
Hi Folks.
Some of you might have heard this, some maybe not. Tomorrow is my last day at the company.
It has been a great six years working here, and all of you have been a big, big part of that. Thank you for the camaraderie, the stimulation, and the friendship. What an incredible place this has been. You guys rock!
Starting Saturday, I will be fully unemployed. This is the kind of I-don’t-know-where-I’m-going-to-land jump that I have explicitly counseled my son not to take! But I have a plan: with any luck, starting in August, I will be a high school Math/Physics teacher. It’s what you call a “big jump”.
It has been a privilege and a joy working with all of you. I hope our paths cross again, every one of you.
Cheers.
Do you remember what if felt like then? As the days got warmer. As the trees got green. As summer was just around the corner.
As school began to wind down. As the smell of cut grass filled the air. As days became long again. Do you remember how your heart wanted to burst with winter finally gone and endless summer awaiting?
So here I am. The grass is green. Spring flowers are in blossom. Even the Pecans and Walnuts have long since pushed out their leaves. And with Friday as my last day of work, a kind of endless summer does indeed await. So where is that giddy feeling? Where is that wanna-burst heart?
Squeezed from both ends. On the one hand, a final project due in a matter of days — something to leave behind, it better be good. And on the other hand, the certification test next week and that minor detail about finding a teaching job — that big next thing that isn’t quite a thing, yet.
I’m telling you, I don’t even smell the cut grass.
“You want to come with me and the dogs?” she asked me from the doorway. “It’s beautiful out there.”
I had been inside most of the day, struggling to figure out what I need to absorb about Special Relativity that they’re likely to ask on the test.
“No,” I mumbled. “I can’t.”
It was late in the day. The lavender blossoms of the Verbena where glowing in the slanting light. The sun was warm. The fair and industrious Trudy left on a long walk. Izzy and Charlie were certainly relieved that there was someone other than that man to take them out. Because that boring man had been in that chair all day.
Now the day is done. I’m afraid to say that if the questions aren’t relatively straightforward problems about length contraction or time dilation, … well I’ll just have to move to the next question. Because a full day of Special Relativity is frankly enough.
An SUV pulled up in front of the house. There were two women in it. Trudy could see this, because she happened to be at the front door at that very moment.
They pulled up beside the purple-blooming Verbena and various Salvias and the yellow-blooming Englemann Daisy and Xexmenia. One of the woman had a cigarette in her hand that she held out the curbside window. She periodically flicked her ashes into the yard. Trudy could see this, and she was not impressed.
The women talked, and the woman flicked. And Trudy opened the door and began walking out to the curb where the women were taking their smoking break. She held up a wagging finger. She was sure that her genetic predisposition to scowling was in full force. She took long strides toward the curb.
The women saw her coming, and the driver let off the brake, and her SUV began to roll slowly forward.
“No, no, no,” Trudy said, shaking her head, pointing at the cigarette. “Not here, you don’t.”
She told me this later that evening. She held up a hand, and we high fived.
Fair and industrious, yes. But on that day: Fair and Fierce.
This place has been good to me. Six years of good, although there were days when “good” might not have been how I would have characterized it then. Ask the Fair and Industrious Trudy, who was always there. Still: good.
Harish sends me a message. He quotes Asad, who observes, “David seems to be smiling a lot, these days.”
Then Asad walks by on his way to the coffee machine. He looks over at me. I look back at him, pulling back the corners of my mouth, exaggerating my smile.
“What?” he says.
“I’m smiling,” I say.
Seven days of smiling left.
© jumpingfish by David Hasan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
