The days are getting longer, but not quickly.
When I ease my car into the driveway after work, the little rabbit (who always scampers ahead of my headlights) scampers ahead of my headlights. I reassure him that I am only coming home; I mean him no harm. Yes, I remind a rabbit I am harmless and it feels good to remind him of this. He does not turn back, however, and whether this is for his own safety or so I can better admire him as he darts away, I remain unsure.
My daughter, 20 years old now, lies asleep in her childhood bedroom. She was supposed to travel with her father today — an overseas adventure months in the planning — but instead she has only driven him to the airport as he embarks on an adventure without her. She has returned to her bed, the nuances of the pandemic having upended yet another of her plans.
Divorce has freed me from the anguish that her father has, once again, declined to allow the gentle folding-in of another human being by adjusting his idea of what has value, but I confess anguish has not released its grip on me entirely. I am tired, I realize, and I know he will be angry at me for writing this, so I write it as gently as I am able. She is already asleep, and no longer a child, so perhaps I am the one replaying old movies in my imagination. It is time to turn off the projector.
And so my mind drifts back to that rabbit — the cleverness of him, the mischievousness, the startling predictability. When I roll into the driveway each evening, the rabbit is waiting, then scurrying, then flashing his cotton tale in my direction. He comforts me even as he races away from me, day after day. Doesn’t he know I am only returning to my home? Doesn’t he want to pause for a moment to hear about my day?
The rabbit does not want to hear about my day. Or perhaps he has heard too much already. He remains watchful for me all the same.
Here is something else predictable. It is January, and I cannot concentrate on reading. I blame post-holiday mental fatigue, but whenever I pick up a book I doze off before the third page has turned. Books weigh heavy in my hands, then drop to my chest or slip to the floor, and soon I suspect no one will believe I am a reader ever again because the only time I would be seen with a book I would be seen sleeping with it, and who would ever see me asleep with a book anyway?
Not-reading is intolerable (as demonstrated by the previous paragraph’s insight into my non-occupied mind) so on the third day of January, I fashion a self-cure. I will begin the year by reading only very small books. Small page count. Small trim size. What better place to begin than E.B. White’s Here is New York, when E.B. journeyed from the salt-water-washed consistency of his Maine home to pen a travel essay about the city at the urging of his stepson Roger Angell?
The 56-page hardcover in my possession is on loan from the library of another initialed gentleman, E.C. of Sioux Falls. E.C. is recognized about town as something of an art collector, but perhaps only because his friends have yet to fully examine his library. Whenever we are together, someone asks if I have seen E.C.’s art collection. For some time I thought this was a euphemism of sorts, or a cipher. Perhaps they were trying to ascertain how well I knew the man or whether I had been invited into the inner workings of his professional offices and personal rooms. Now that I have seen said art collection, I understand it was simply the magnitude and thoughtfulness of the art itself they wanted to celebrate and rightfully so.
But still. That library.
E.B White, that other gentleman, offers sentences like “By rights New York should have destroyed itself long ago, from panic or fire or rioting or failure of some vital supply line in its circulatory system or from some deep labyrinthine short circuit.” He gives you reason to rethink parenthesis. But most of all, E.B. White never gives you one word more than you need. He pulls on his raincoat. He shows you the city.
And so I pull on my winter coat, grateful I have not destroyed myself long ago from panic or rioting of some vital mental system. I tuck the book under my arm and head to Bread and Circus for lunch where the downtown Burger Battle is underway. I stop by Zandbroz on the way home, wander the aisles, opening myself to other literary miscellany. If E.B. can write his favorite city, I can write mine. I can walk readers through the aisles of the independent book store that is really an eclectic gift shop that somehow never stopped being, at its heart, an independent bookstore. I can stroll past the bars I’ve never visited because I don’t know what to order and the theatre marquis for the movie house I used to frequent as a child and now frequent once again. I can not worry, for a few moments, about whether this city is too big or too small, whether I am considered either too urban or too provincial for living and loving here.
I will travel again someday. When traveling doesn’t mean putting people at risk. When the money is in the bank and the worn-out luggage has been patched and the journey is one of uncomplicated readiness and god-help-me-not-for-another-funeral. I will travel with my beloveds. I will travel alone. But for now, I will park my car in my cracked-pavement driveway and address the neighborhood rabbit scampering ever into the shadows, as certain as the lengthening of days.
I will go inside and check, for the millionth time, to see if my child is breathing, because that’s what mothers do sometimes. I will pick up a book and try to read.
Thoughts on E.B., E.C., and the power of small gestures
I think you might just inspire me to write in my journal again or pen daily haikus.