When I was young, I was tired, my eyes barely open, and my father would pick me up, and carry me in his arms up the stairs. He would lay me on my bed, pulling up the sheets, and he would kiss me gently on the forehead. He would say sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. And as I began to nod off to dreamland, one nagging spark kept me awake. Who were these bedbugs, and why would they want to bite me?
But I was so tired and I drifted off to sleep, but my nagging spark grew into a night weasel, and it would chase me round and round, and I would find myself in a field, in the middle of nowhere without my pants, no pants, not even my tightie whities.
I was bare to the world, chased by night weasels, and then there were so many weasels, weasels making little weasels, baby boy weasels, who instantly grew, larger and larger, becoming snarling dogs, barely held back on a leash, held back by a dark voice who commands them not to eat me all up, to save a small bite for him, one last bite to savour.
And I would dream harder and grow wings, and began to rise from the ground, soaring into the air, looking back down on the dogs, and weasels, and suddenly I was in a classroom, the teacher calling me to the front of the class. There I am, once again with no pants on. Where did my pants go? And the girls are laughing, poking each other, saying look at that! His little thing. It’s growing. Oh my god! In front of everyone. What is he thinking?
Deep down, deeply inward, I was thinking about you. You were not even a glint in my eye, certainly not on my radar, but you were in my dream, me not knowing who you were, or why I felt this pull toward your warmth. Why as the feeling so sad and yet so beautiful at the same time, laughter and tears? These are the things we think of when people we know die.
My mother made me pancakes, little silver dollar pancakes, and I would smear butter on them, knowing it was not real butter, it was cheap margarine, but we called it butter, and she would ask if I wanted maple syrup for my pancakes, and so I naturally said yes. Yes, Mother, please pass the syrup. She made her maple syrup by boiling brown sugar and water in a saucepan, then she added artificial maple flavour. Voila! Maple syrup. Want some powdered milk to go with that?
I didn’t know the difference between real and artificial. That was just what we ate, what we called maple syrup and butter, and milk. I cut my pancakes with a fork and knife. My brother Kelly taught me the proper way to use a knife and fork. I held the fork with my left hand, my forefinger pressing on the back of the fork, and my right hand held the knife, my right forefinger guiding the knife back and forth, cutting the silver dollar pancakes into bite size pieces. Sixty years later, I woke up.
I got up to pee, and unfortunately I woke the sleeping dog, who wanted to go out. Not wanting to wake Michelle, I found my red rubber boots, put away for winter, stored way up high in the hall closet and I put them on. It wasn’t raining, it was a sunny day. I kept Maisy’s diaper on her until we reached the front door of our apartment building. She stopped in the doorway, not wanting to go out, putting on the brakes.
I drag her the rest of the way through the doorway and remove the diaper cover. It is revealed that she has made me a present, a “cookie”. Not a lump of coal. Not a hero biscuit. Her diaper was swollen with the night, a by-product of her pacing, pacing, pacing.
I am listening to Mandy Patinkin with his gorgeous show tune tenor voice. He is singing Busby Berkeley Dreams by The Magnetic Fields:
“ I should forgotten you long ago, but you’re in every song I know, whining and pining is wrong and so on and so forth, of course of course. But no, you can’t have a divorce. I haven’t seen you in ages, but it’s not as bleak as it seems. We still dance on whirling stages in my Busby Berkeley dreams. The tears have stained all the pages of my True Romance magazines. We still dance in my outrageously beautiful Busby Berkeley dreams.”
After the walk, I fill her bowl with dogfood, and make myself breakfast. The Apple AI DJ is choosing the playlist, mixing Pavement with show tunes. It is bizarre and glorious.
I pause to wonder where it all went so wrong. Not my life, but the world, which I know sounds ridiculous, because I can’t control these things. I reach for a fork to eat my bacon and egg, and I think,” Will I just use the side of the fork as a knife, rather than get a knife from the drawer?
I pause and laugh at myself, realizing how completely ridiculous I am, trying to save time by not washing a knife, by using the edge of the fork as a knife. It was at that very moment that I came to a realization. This is where it all went wrong. Do we make the effort and get a knife from the drawer? Do we cut our food like my older brother taught me?
I think of the two poached eggs my father ate almost every day when I was growing up, only in his later years, did he switch to a small bowl of cereal with fresh fruit. Despite being a type 2 diabetic, he would have a mocha decaf coffee with Nestle’s cocoa powder. Even though cocoa has caffeine and the chocolate powder includes a ton of sugar. Let me remind you he was a type 2 diabetic. With congestive heart failure.
But that is what we do. We do the wrong thing. We know it’s easier to use the side of the fork as a knife. It is what we do. Why change now?
I say just eat with your fingers. Built in fork and knife.
Beautiful