A Little Hope For When You're Weary

I don’t want to carrot and stick my way through life, die with regret

There’s a place I go sometimes. Across the bridge, across the river, open the glass doors into yesterday. Fifties retro café with checkered floors, Formica topped tables, four foot photos of Marilyn, Elvis and James Dean hanging on the walls.

I sit, look at the photo of Marilyn in a tutu. Soft filter makes her ethereal. Lordy, she was beautiful I think. Can’t help but remember sitting here as a teenager. The three of us — Bonnie, Audrey and me. Before we grew apart, before Audrey disappeared, before Bonnie got married and had a little boy who went blind at five.

Just teenage girls, whispering about boys, homework and school dances over giant plates of hand-cut fries and chocolate milkshakes served in stainless steel cups still sweating from the milkshake machine. We thought we were so grown up back then, but we were so young. So innocent. Babies, really.

I can still see us, heads bent together. Laughing, whispering about dreams and tomorrows that were never going to happen but we didn’t know it. Didn’t know how ugly Bonnie’s divorce would be, or mine, because we were young and imagined our tomorrows filled with more promise and less tears than they would be.

But that was then, this is now. And they were singing bye bye, Miss American Pie.

Waitress wanders over. Same pink uniform and white apron as when I was in high school. Flashes a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. Says coffee like it’s a question and I say yes, please, turn the fat ceramic cup over in the saucer.

Watch as she tips the coffee pot, fills the cup, sloshes the saucer full, too. Glance at her face, but she’s already turned away. Mumbled sorry as she walks away. It’s okay, I say, no worries but she’s already at the next table.

I leave stupidly big tips here. My way of thanking god I’m not wearing a fifties diner uniform. Honest work, but I promise you there’s no little girls dreaming of growing up to be a waitress earning minimum wage in some cheesy retro diner but it pays the bills. Maybe. Probably not.

There’s a vintage sugar jar on the table. Thick glass, stainless steel lid with a pour spout. I pick it up, notice the sugar is stuck. Tip the jar, sugar doesn’t move. Humidity is what does that. Give it a whack, it’ll pour again.

Sometimes feels like the sands of time are as stuck as the sugar in that jar but try as I might, can’t give it a whack, get it moving again. Stuck in the same day over and over. Only thing changing seems to be my age.

At some point, you can’t anymore. You know?

You just can’t. Anymore.

With the same old, same old.

Every day, same thing. Get up, shower, pour coffee, sit in zoom calls that could’ve been an email. Check off tasks from a to-do list that never gets shorter.

Wash dishes, floors, laundry, push the mawing beast to suck dust bunnies that will appear in the same place next week and the week after. Thinking when I’m dead someone else is going to vacuum dust-bunnies from the exact spots I did.

If it’s not work or housework, it’s the side hustle because who can afford not to? Some days, doesn’t matter how much you love it. Oh how I love writing. I do. So much. It’s air. Lets me breathe. A day without words is a dark day. But still. The days are crammed like coffee sloshed over a cup. Overflowing but no one’s sorry.

A body gets weary. That’s all. A body just gets weary sometimes.

Wondering where did the day go? Drag yourself off to bed. Lay a weary head on the pillow. Like Shakespeare said. To sleep, perchance to dream.

Wake up, do it all over again. And again. And again.

Some days, I think maybe I’m the dead Bukowski wrote about. Rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead. Eyes that don’t see. But I do. See. And what I see is the same day repeating itself. Over and over.

He got lucky. Escaped the nine to five, wrote books and poems. Think about that poem, about the bluebird inside him. It wants out, he says. He pours whiskey on it. Blows cigarette smoke on it. Keep him safe, he says. So no one knows he’s there.

I like that idea, having a bluebird inside.

Hope is the thing with feathers.

Sometimes I wonder what I need. More brains, more courage, more heart? Don’t know. The yellow brick road leads to a mansion in a gated community now, and we’re all rattling the gates pleading for help while the winged monkeys close in.

Goodbye yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl.

It’s not that I mind where I am because I don’t. I’m so lucky. Work from home, get paid fair. Hours are flexible, clients are nice people. It’s just—

I think I got lost somewhere. Along the way.

Took a detour, don’t know where, found myself on a dead end street and wonder if I’m going nowhere. Same day, over and over again. Just want to know which way to turn, want to know where to go from here but my GPS is broken.

Recalculating, recalculating.

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Here’s what some guy told me. I need to manage my time better. So I can do more. Hustle more. He tells me about the Pomodoro technique. Hustle. But don’t forget to take breaks. Five minutes for every twenty five spent slogging. Carrot, meet stick.

I know he means well, but still. I can’t help thinking of the gold stars we give kids starting in kindergarten. Not for thinking different, not for chasing their dreams. Nope. For doing what someone else expects of them.

I don’t want to carrot and stick my way through life.

Don’t want to die with a belly full of regret. Who does?

Number one regret of the dying. Not having the courage to live a life true to themselves. Doing what everyone else wants until death knocks at the door and then it’s like Oprah said a few years back at the Academy Awards. Time’s up!

I just can’t. With that. Life should not be a road trip with a small child, started with enthusiasm that wanes as the miles go by.

I’m tired, are we there yet?

Does no one see how insane this world we built is? Costs going up, bills goes up, wages standing still, work ourselves to the bone. Nietzsche, maybe. Parable of the Madman. Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?

I want my horizon back.

We’re all mad, Nietzsche says. Mad as a hatter, I think. Painting the roses red but there’s no hookah smoking caterpillar dispensing advice, no waking up to find it was all a dream. We’re all mad here, too.

Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.

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I’m flipping through my phone when I find it. A video from a couple summers ago. Makes me smile, remember that early summer morning. Six a.m., sun peeking over the roof, sitting in my driveway, phone in my hand. Eyes wide as a child. Watching.

I hit play. Watch a cocoon crack. A tiny leg pushes out, downy and soft. Watch again as a little butterfly crawls out, looking like some little crumpled thing you’d find in your pocket after laundry. Like wet crumpled paper. Orange and black.

They don’t start that way. They start as humble caterpillars. Eat, forage, sleep, wake up, do it again but it’s not monotony. It’s just survival. Doing the same thing every day, keeping themselves alive to get to when they’re ready to grow their wings.

Tiny foot reaches for a stem. Quivering with effort.

I remember how I’d caught my breath. Cupped my hands in case it fell and it didn’t, but the one after it did and I caught the tiny crumpled thing, eyes wet at the feel of little wings in my hands. Gently set it on a leaf, watched as those wings unfolded.

She flutters up. Drinks from a flower. And then she’s gone.

Up, up over the cedars, into the blue skies. The video ends and my eyes are wet as I rummage in my bag, put a bill on the table. Slip out the door, stand at the window and watch the waitress pick up the bill, stare like she’s got a butterfly in her hands.

Did you know butterflies spin silk from their heads? Wrap themselves up and rebuild themselves from the atoms up. Grow the wings so they can fly. I wonder what I might have in my head I could build a cocoon with. Rebuild myself and grow wings to fly. Don’t know for sure. Maybe words, I think.

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