revolution
— — a full turn around a central point.
After I explained the way schools might could work next year, Pia asked me for good news. I explained that because of the uprisings and protests, some positive shifts had been happening. That even though this time was filled with unfathomable pain (I didn’t use these words) and total uncertainty in this time (these either), there was potential and possibility for big change in the world. After a while, she grew tired of hearing me try to explain how much I don’t know and asked me to tell her some good news. The kind of news that’s about a package coming for you in the mail. The kind of news that’s about a special book or a new dress or a letter from a friend.
We got mail today! A hand-made math kit from our sweet Brooklyn neighbor, two doors down, who is an excellent math teacher and tutor and mom. The kit, made mostly of recycled materials, is a delight. A box of learning and possibility brought here by careful hands and a truck or a plane then carried by more hands and hand-delivered to us, on a doorstep, here in Indiana at a different place than the place where we call home. The mail will never stop being amazing to me. This is good news.
When we get back there, to the address where we’ve usually been, nearly twelve years deep, we will return to an empty apartment below ours. Our neighbors, friends who cared little if we vacuumed at 8pm, or if our kids ran up and down the long apartment, thumping on the trampoline over and over. Neighbors, friends, who cared more about bringing us lemon bars, brownies, muffins, birthday gifts and cards right on time, are gone today. Moving. On their way west west west toward a new adventure. It’s a loss. Our babies were babies together, touching each others babies faces, falling all over each other, sharing chairs, eating dinner at one another’s houses.
I think I’ll postpone my feelings until I’m tap dancing in our apartment and the new neighbors, some millennial who thinks they’ve low-key scored with this rent-stabilized apartment, unaware of their new landlady who is a certified psychic energy thief, rap on the ceiling with a broom — I will just tap harder and so will Brendan because he has tap shoes too and so do both of the girls and we’ll tap tap tap on the floor of our kitchen until we all cry cry cry because everything is changed.
Pia asks why there are no sidewalks here. She says she doesn’t love being in cars because of, you know, the smell. She has a thing about car smells. I have a thing about driving and going somewhere.
We are all going somewhere, a sudden and radical complete change.
What is the central point?
What is the point?
