Losing Things

The work crew set off about 8:30am. I stayed behind to write. It was hard to do that, let myself and 21 other people think that writing my stories is as important as putting a roof on a house for a grandmother and her two grandchildren, who have been living with blue tarps over their heads for over two years.

I took my walk and ate lunch in the memorial garden. I began recopying the final revision of collection. By 2:30 in the afternoon I had completed the first of eleven stories. I took a break and carried my handwritten copy of Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Kindness" out to the parking lot and copied the first stanza in big yellow chalk letters onto the concrete. I want it to be the first thing the work crew sees when they return this afternoon.

Later, after a dinner of spaghetti casserole, prepared at home by my sister-in-law and carried here in a cooler in the back of our vans to Louisiana, I will ask anyone who is interested to spend a few minutes listing out things they have lost. Some of those things will not surprise me, but I am certain that I many things on their lists will. If they let me, I will list some of those things here for you.

I have put aside Tolstoy for the week, to copy my own work, to work with teenagers who are learning how to use power tools instead of laying on a beach, with parents who took their vacation time to work on someone else's house. We are fathers and mothers and and grandparents and sons and daughters. We are plasterers and teachers and students and writers.

And we have all lost things. Precious things, things we thought we could never live without.

my hair

my grandpa

shoes

my dog

my dad

my flip-flops in a lake

motivation for school

Monica

every pen I've ever used in school

my uterus

Shakespeare, my cat

my learner's permit

my best friend Pat to cancer

my right breast

my keys in a Steak and Shake, found three hours later

foods that I used to love when I was younger but now they kill my stomach

tv remote

my homework

two husbands

Aunt Sandy, I loved her

my mom, 10-20-2-12

a stuffed animal from when I was a kid

I once lost my brother but then we found him.

my lucky socks

 

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