maybe it will pass

it's raining and it's stunningly quiet in my apartment. I was supposed to be reading all about pregnancy and malaria so I can seem like an expert tomorrow as I try to write this concept paper for Exxon to give us money. Instead, I've sort of just became a little incapacitated by loneliness and sadness. It will pass, it seems to do that. But I wonder if this happens to other people too. I remember it happening to me as a child - maybe for just for twenty minutes - but every breath hurt a little bit and all your thoughts ran together as you made a litany of every tender and sad thing you could think of - but all at once. Work until we die, funerals, lost loves, war, what it will be like when your mother dies, or your best friend, what it will feel like to have old bones, what your funeral will be like... Until you come to this culminating and resounding crescendo of sadness and understanding where everything plateaus and you find some tiny comfort in the fact that everything ends, and life was meant to be this heart-shattering and poignant. You feel pleased with yourself for feeling so deeply - about anything - but especially about existence itself. Or at least this is what you say.

Afterwards, an old lady you work with, with old bones, calls you on the telephone at home. As if she knew you were thinking about mortality and loss on every level known to man. Her name is Fran. Her voice is high and she speaks quickly. She is definitely nearing eighty, but so tiny she seems a hundred years old. She invites you to dinner on Wednesday because her garden has grown too many vegetables and she needs some help "eating them up." "I'd have you over tomorrow, she says - but I play in the orchestra tomorrow." You hear her clap twice with excitement on the other end of the line when you thank her for the invitation and tell her you wouldn't miss it for the world. She is amazing and joyous about all of the things that you have just convinced yourself to be joyous about.

Then, you get invited to a surprise birthday party in Philadelphia tomorrow night. And you know how you love birthday cake. You think about birthday cake for a while and how nice it will be to see some of your favorite folks. You call Helena and tell her to meet you in Philadelphia and come to the surprise party. You convince her to come down to Baltimore too so you can both have dinner with Fran, who speaks French and plays viola just like Helena. You day dream about how all three of you will "eat up" vegetables together and talk about how delicious the chicken is, even if it's dry.

Just then, you realize that you haven't heard the rain in quite some time and the clouds have probably passed.