100 Proof

According to his mother, his father left so much pocket change lying around that she started saving it. In the end, she saved enough to buy him a new suit—his father always wondered how she’d bought it.

Later his father abandoned him, and he never got over the heartbreak.

He shared his father’s habit: piles of change left everywhere, like archaeological fragments. I collected it in a bowl, and he abandoned the money when he left me.

It was not enough for a suit. But it was enough for my first two tanks of gas out of town.

All week, I have walked on insubstantial ground, my arches aching from the effort of keeping my feet from wobbling. This inconsistentency is of my own making, the clamor in my head causing liquefaction all around me.

There is a corner up ahead; there is a rock just out of sight.

I plan to perch there for a day or two. I plan to make myself like that stone. I will stare hard in a forward direction, not back at the agitation I created in my wake.

Ordinary vectors can be added, subtracted, reversed, multiplied, scaled. They are more than small lines and arrowheads on notebook pages. They represent more than a simple equation. Sometimes they measure acceleration toward a point of intersection.

They might represent force, or velocity, or a southbound train accelerating to 70 miles per hour. These things, after all, can be measured and documented, tracked and analyzed. There is direction. There is magnitude. And even when logic has dissapated, there is no vector without sense.

I woke in a panic, fearing I’d forgotten something. There is such little room for error these days, schedules so tightly interlocking that a single misdirection scatters it all. But one message said everything was alright, and another said it was better than that. It was enough to allow for breath in between the noise of awakening. I set about my morning—coffee, breakfast, candles, music—calmer for the knowledge that, at least for now, everything was in its right place.

She knew me before I knew myself, and as we age, the photographs show two women marching along such a similar path.

I love her fiercely, and fight her fiercely, too. We are cleaved, we are cleft, we are contrary, we are carbon. Sometimes it is complicated, this dance away and then back again.

But I always carry her with me. Her voice is my voice. Her heart gave rise to my strength. Her approach leads me to accept nothing less than a life with arms fully outstretched.

Some mirrors show visible light and some see other waves, waves we only know about in theory. We believe those theories scientists say are true, but we also believe images we see, staring back at us from the hard, clear glass lying over silver.

We put our palms to that glass first, then to the one who reflects us, showing us all that is beautiful and authentic. We all seek that one who sees us, irrefutably us. We raise glasses to reflect joy and love to where you stand together, hands clasped.

*For Susan and Don on their wedding day…

“Are you married?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, and this time I laughed.

“I like you,” he said. “I like you a lot.”

It was so loud in the club, so I didn’t bother to tell him any of it: that I wanted to believe him, but didn’t. It is what it is.