A lifetime later

At 18, I stayed up all night all summer.  Of course, I slept by day, but every evening at 11 p.m., I went on duty as a personal care assistant.  I was working at a home for people with severe developmental challenges, folks on feeding tubes, with muscles atrophied from disuse, for whom a grunt might be a milestone in communication.  After checking each resident, changing diapers, rotating limp bodies to new positions to prevent bedsores, mopping floors, and gathering laundry, I’d make my way to the nurses’ station.  There the other women pulled out their craft projects, knitting, crocheting, and gabbing their way through the long night.  Ears wide open and fingers fumbling with my half-finished dishcloth, I listened to stories of shopping adventures and struggles with spouses. What shocked me most was Mary’s admission that every night, after her kids were in bed and before she went to work, she got down on her hands and knees to mop the kitchen floor.  What unholy hooligans she must have, I thought, who track mud so ungratefully onto her gleaming tiles.  Or what high standards of cleanliness she ascribed to, that she would be offended by specks of dust not yet gathered into lagomorphan lumps. 

At 36, a lifetime later, I crouch on bended knee. Wet rag in hand, I scrub away the remnants of supper, the scribbles of marker that didn’t stay in the lines, the splatters of milk and juice now dried into circles of grime. My standards are not particularly high, nor are my children, now sleeping, particularly messy, so this ritual is repeated not daily but at random intervals through the month.  I always start in the same corner and work my way around the table, moving the chairs just barely, imagining them still heavy with their occupants (or, quite honestly, too lazy to do the job right and relocate them to the other room).  I kneel in the silence, putting to right, focusing not on the likelihood that more milk will spill tomorrow, but on this smudge, this crumb, this drop of wine smeared across these floorboards, now sanctified.

block by block

In my dream, I visited a city, where each block had a tree decorated with flowers and balloons. When's the party? Or maybe there's going to be a parade? Or perhaps, as in Nigeria, the president is coming to town and people have prettied the place up. Then a neighbor told me of the tradition that when a person dies, the family sets up a memorial at the spot where they were killed.

The dream dissolves and I drive around in a daze. Here, armed men broke into a house and killed the resident after robbing him. Here, a car crashed into a tree while police were in pursuit. Here, a man on a stolen motorcycle lost control. Here, a taxi driver was shot on a Sunday morning while the church across the street was singing Alleluia. Here, a jealous boyfriend dispatched his competition. Here, a nine year old girl crossing the street after buying candy was hit by a truck. Here, a barfight ended with a knife. Here, a car collided with an 8 year old boy in a crosswalk, his parents just out of reach of his hands to pull him to safety. Here, the foul odor tipped off neighbors to the body stuffed in the trunk. Here, an evening stroll was cut short by gun shot. Here, a basketball game was lost, as was a life.

My neighborhood is a rosary of sorrows and at each station of the cross I pause to remember the suffering.