How to Handle Days That Aren't Beautiful
It is not a beautiful day. It is not even a day with a nice personality. It is an indifferent day. Clouds like weary smoke from a blaze that went out long ago, gray haze, lukewarm, as far from fire as it is from ice. The kind of day that smothers colors. The kind of day that sinks into itself, looks at you blankly, and says, "I don't know, what do you want to do." And it's not a question.
On this vacant day we leave our Grace at college. Leave her in a little dorm room with a roommate and bags full of stuff I don't think she needs but she's sure she does. It’s likely that she's right and I'm not. I don't know as much as I think I do. I know this. I also know as I wrap my arms around this girl with earnest eyes and a heart as big as a grassland that this moment is too small for what has to fit inside it. I just dumbly stroke her soft, soft hair and try to keep this moment right now for as long as I can. I don’t want it to ever become back then.
Still, I can't stand here with my face resting on Grace's perfect head for the rest of my life, even though that seems like the only cogent thing to do. I can't hold on, and I'm not that interested in letting go and losing Grace.
But it doesn't feel like loss as Shannon and I drive away into this dreary, vacant day. The future flows into all the empty moments and fills them up. I am starting to think that maybe we never really lose anything at all. There's a song that comes on the car stereo called Jumbo Jet. It's about being empty up in the air, then coming down and finding what you lost. This is just the beginning, says the singer. This is just a start.
The song came out years ago when the kids were younger and I was tailspinning for reasons I don't quite understand. Losing myself, an empty man alone up in the empty air. I used to ride the bus with the kids in the morning. It took them to school and me to work, which was right across the street from the school. This was in India, so you could do unorthodox things like jump on the school bus in a suit and tie, jump off in the school parking lot, then cross the street to the office.
On the bus ride one morning, I sat next to Grace. She was in fifth grade and I had an earbud in with Jumbo Jet playing through it. It was a vacant day and I was vacant inside. Grace's grassland of a heart could see into voids even then, see them filled up with future instead of emptiness. She scooted closer to me, entwined her arm with mine, leaned her head against my shoulder, held my hand. This is just the beginning. This is just a start.
It was a meager morning, but there were better mornings ahead. Holding hands on a bus with Grace on a day that wasn’t beautiful, but that became beautiful, that's the kind of thing you can't ever lose, even when you let it go.
Now the desert is blurring by outside the car windows. It’s taking a deep breath, getting ready to sigh into the coming cool of autumn that’s starting to seep into the dawns and dusks. Summer is dying, but that's only half the story.
