When You have A Terrible

Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

It began with the truck incident.

The parked car in the street, the U-haul in the driveway, a pick-up truck peeling out of the parking lot with less-than-desirable visibility. I blink, thinking of course I could clear the memories from my mind.

I could not.

I scrawl a statement on the police record, my contact information. My mom and Monet watch from their boxes – wide-eyed as I bend to pick up a shattered picture on the side of the bedroom.

It is not yet 2 pm.

I call the number on the brochure, speak with an advocate – apologize profusely when the security officer of the front desk calls back. I schedule an appointment. I shuttle boxes to the storage unit, stopping at the phone store for a new number, phone, email. A phone case from Monet for a week early birthday treat.

Back home, I fuss with my clothes and hit the alarm button to hear the distinct sound of a truck locked in the driveway below.

I unload the remaining belongings – the rest left unscathed – and after I put myself down for a late night nap, Monet and I find ourselves back on the driveway picking tiny pieces of my life from before.

What’s with today? she says.

—

Earlier, it was the heart necklace.

The diamond heart ripped from the chain as I open my eyes to look for the noise, the hurtful ping as it scatters across the room, the temporary panic as it skids toward the vent.

I crouch down, find the diamond, slip it with the spit off my face into a bag, tuck it in my top vanity drawer.

I’m sorry, I say to myself.

—

Earlier still, a miscommunication, a disagreement left unresolved, a looming decision, a fitful night of sleep. The morning-after feeling when you wake, remembering you’re ringless with a scratch down the side of your truck.

What’s with today? I say to no one at all.

—

I have been living at breakneck speed this month, rejiggering calendars to compensate for a sickness here, a last-minute decision there, both on the greiving and receiving end of each other’s mistakes, our own. In a misfired attempt to cope with the fullness, I pounded three daily miles on the treadmill only to develop a bad case of runner’s knee (oh, if only this were metaphorical).

I knew it was coming, the dropped bottom, although I anticipated far less shards.

It was a bad day, is all. It was one of many, smack dab in the middle of a lot of other people’s bad days, in the midst of a news cycle that spins wild, in the center of a hard collective.

And this is how I know to start paying attention. This is how I know it’s either going to change, or it isn’t.

—

I do not feel better yet, not really. My soul still feels a little knocked up, wrung out. Still underwater.

But in all of life’s strange-and-graceful meandering, isn’t this what it takes? A few shards to shatter the surface? Your own small, average mishaps swirling under a slew of larger ones to snap you into the realization that this is it? This is what happens?

Just, this – the everyday mess of life. The tiny moments that drive you insane from inconvenience into sheer gratitude for survival in no less than the time it takes to spit in a face. The dumb stuff that sends you jumping for joy then brings you to your knees, your fingers picking pieces of glass from your pictures.

A whole world, waiting for a whole new world.

—

The next thing, then.

A nap. A book. A text to the girlfriends. A short walk, a favor for the neighbor. Catching up with Markus. A phone call with my dad.  An emptying of a calendar square for Morgen, a filling for me. A water refill. A course correction of the largest degree.

And this, one of Max’s famous knock knock jokes:

—

Will you remember me in a year?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a month?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a week?
Yes.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
See? You forgot me already!

—

A whispered prayer that I don’t.