i took myself out for coffee this afternoon. well, me and jc.
we had a fine time of it.
took the same route that mozie and i took on sunday.
same tree-leaf-clomping-stomping-shuffling route. i was just as taken with the leaves as i was with mozea on sunday. i darted back and forth across the street to whichever part of the sidewalk had the most yellow and red piled up on it. i was full-on into my clomping and sloshing and yahooing about when i noticed that some primly dressed folks getting off the bus with pointy umbrellas were trying desperately not to look at me. if you've ever died your hair a color that you've seen on old women in grocery stores, you know that look.
i guess it was only ok to enjoy the leaves so dizzily when i had my 2 year old at my side.
(as an aside: good job for taking the bus to work and all, but how can you get all dressed up and get hired for very important jobs that provide you with the social wherewithal to even know how to carry one of those umbrellas and then completely miss the point?)
anyhoos--
once i reached gladstone coffee, i threw open the door, feeling just as blustery as the wind that carried me there and proceeded to order a hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles.
this was a mistake.
another grand social foible in the span of 10 minutes.
the extremely cool barista kind of jerked his head back into his neck a bit and said, "ok....do you want it lukewarm?" and it immediately became clear that i'd just ordered a kiddie drink.
i don't know how to go out without mozea, apparently.
i've completely forgotten how to pretend to be cool. i don't even know how to do my hair anymore. (although, i'm not sure i ever knew how to pull off a successful coiffure.)
after the "nice try, sweet heart" of a moment with the coffee king, i trundled off with my whip cream and sprinkles and mom sweats to the back yard so i could feel the wind and hang with God. i bumped a few tables on my way out with my ever-rising mom hips and then spilled a little cocoa on some extremely cool person's table. "oh, i got it" i said, and wiped it up with my sleeve.
about 8 years ago i stood at the edge of lakum dukum at whitman college in the land of two wallas for several hours in the very late evening of some winter night. i stood right at the very edge, convinced that i was going to try to walk on water. not like Christ. like peter. big difference. i stood and watched the duck crap float around the surface of the water, bumping into other duck crap, forming large continents and then just as quickly as the alliance was made a wind would come up and the masses would drift apart again.
duck poop pangeas.
for hours, i tell you, i watched this.
my dear friend jess called to me at one point with a small and pitying voice from behind some distant bushes: "good luck, sl! i love you!" she was on her way to the library and knew exactly what i was up to; i'd called her earlier in the day and spoke very quickly, breathy even:
"hey, i'm going to try to walk on lakum dukum. think of me."
(jess and i later ran naked across the platform in front of memorial building at midnight the night before graduation. i had a terrible case of incontinence back then and hysterically peed all over the long ramp where our classmates would stand the next day and get little papers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars from a tall and believable president that said we were smart enough to feel ok now in the world.)
jess passed and the winds died down and the crickets went to sleep and it was then, after staring at this black cold mess of an opponent for hours and hours, that i just did it.
i stepped right on in--took the plunge, as they say.
duck poop and slimey silty cold water collected around the cowl of my sweater. other competing duck poops went up my nose. my bandanna dripped cold, stickying water down my face after i'd come up for air, just to punctuate the failed experience.
and i stood there for a bit, in the middle of it all.
pangeas splitting and forming around my giant head, gathering at my neck.
some sleeping ducks woke up and swam over to see if i was a loaf of bread.
"nice try, sweet heart" of a moment it was, indeed.
thus are my times with Jesus some afternoons and some very late winter evenings. trundling and whip creaming and sprinkling and dorking and leaf-shuffling and failed water-walking.
i must believe that it's all worth the try and that they really are "nice try"s, good tries. admirable tries, from a certain perspective. a very, very peculiar perspective ;)
the yahooing about and the mom sweats, the duck crap and the breathy calls included.
i must or it's to the land of pointy umbrellas i ought to go.
