CONVERSATIONS WITH COLLEAGUES (AN APRIL 2020 JOURNAL ENTRY)
I spend my mornings with two toddlers, in the backyard or a one-mile radius of it. We learn to balance on tree branches and count every pinecone on the property, after we learn to count.
There are 51.
We name all the deer in Hendrick’s Park — even they seem wary to be raising babies in a world with so many cars and men with NRA bumper stickers.
After snack time, we talk politics. Did you know all 3-year-olds are Marxists? Their grasp on free trade is a little tenuous, but that’ll change with new vocab.
I hear preschool is a real melting pot these days.
Yesterday we drove back from the playground, and for a split second I could have sworn I saw the forest go up in flames. The blaze lapped at my threadbare tires, and my A/C groaned at the heat.
All up ahead, I saw rivers dry to a crisp, while the deer (Wendy and Minnie and Dot and Basil) cried salty, dusty tears at the streambed.
“Doesn’t it feel like end times?” I asked the backseat.
They nodded solemnly, I’m sure, and said something like, “I think I left my stick at the slide.”
THE FORTUNE TELLER, 2019
(I don’t believe in fortunes, and I’m not superstitious. Sometimes I let a friend read my tarot cards, and when her lovely hands sift through visions of love and luck I let myself smile. She talks of scales, in both equity and fish, and nods at my birthday—the fall equinox—like I chose it myself.Last summer, I’ll confess, I paid a man in Northern Ghana to read my future. I told myself it was for the cultural experience, but when I ducked into the cool mud hut with a palm full of bills I could sense my spiritual friend smirking from across the globe. Call it a premonition. The fortune teller accepted my donation, then shook a basket of shells in his lap.The shells told him this: I’d already met my husband, he was a thoughtful man, and one day we’d bear twins. Then the fortune teller lowered his voice and whispered, “you must dress your children exactly the same, or there will be consequences.”I had to stifle a laugh. I don’t believe in fortunes, and this one was oddly specific.But I had to admit something to myself. If someday, far down the line, I find myself at a doctors’ appointment holding the hand of a thoughtful man, and the nurse’s gelatinous probe reveals two extra heartbeats instead one — I’ll sure as hell rush home and buy a dozen pairs of identical baby clothes. then I’ll call my spiritual friend and apologize for my smugness.)
