A trip to the gym and I will sweat out all my frustrations and world weariness. Only I don't. I carry out all I carry in and trail behind me my two girls like droopy ducklings back to the car. We load up and pull out of the lot.
We stop to fill the car with gas. I hate this chore. The car is so greedy. The car just consumes and wants more from me like everyone and everything else. I sigh and clomp to the pump. I go through all the proper procedures to feed the car. It seems to take so long in the simmering, cicada sizzling, late afternoon. I'm sure I got the slow pump and my car is totally empty as usual because I put off filling up until completely necessary. Finally, with sweat rolling down my back, the nozzle clicks to indicate that the car is engorged like some tick on a dog. Done. Or nearly.
To make the annoyance completely absurd, I can't get my receipt out of the convenient, at-the-pump, printer. I struggle to grasp just the tiniest edge and try to pull. But the receipt is wedged up inside the machine. It is my nature not to lose a battle and I use my key to try and coax the paper further from the slot. I waste precious minutes of my life on this task in the sweltering Houston heat. I cuss at the edge of the paper and I decide time is indeed too precious. I slide defeated into the car. As I pull the seatbelt across my sweat-beaded body, I tell the girls I'm sorry to have taken so long, but I was trying to get the receipt out of the pump.
My oldest daughter Eleanor cocks her head slightly and quizzes, "You can return gas?" I pause. I flash-consider my habit of shopping and then finding purchases too extravagant, or too big, or too small, or too... well, returnable. I snort. I start to laugh a little. Eleanor smiles and blinks and me oddly. She starts to giggle, although she is only laughing at my laughter; she doesn't even understand her own joke. Now the sheer joy of truly laughing for the first time in too long takes over. My youngest daughter Emeline joins in, too, because laughter is just infectious. I explain to Eleanor what is so funny about her joke, and the three of us sit in the car in the gas station, laughing like we haven't in weeks. Heads back, eyes twinkling, in my case, tears streaming. A man passes by our car and sees us and grins. We must be a sight.
I wheel us into traffic and head toward home with a smile still clinging to the corners of my eyes. I keep glancing at my girls in the rearview mirror. Eleanor is looking at me, smiling, and I think she is so relieved to know I can still laugh. I slide back the sunroof and I swear there is a now a hint of laughter in the song of the cicadas, buzz band of summer's swelter, and I vow to let a little of the stuff I've been carrying around inside of me blow out and stay behind with that receipt stuck in the pump.
3 comments:
That was wonderful. I could really feel it, and so when the delight struck, I was right there in vivid fashion, and I felt the relief and saw the eyes twinkling and heard the cicadas sound lighter and ringing at the end. You're a lovely writer, Maleah.
Yep, what Dawn said of course.
Slater's first belly laugh was a sound I will never forget. I'll never forget what it did to me, how something was released. And now in those moments I find it to be the greatest treasure...those spontaneous belly laughs. And what you have written makes me think of a bad haircut in a strange place with stresses everywhere and how for a moment he was there and we shared this insane few minutes of make you puke, tears coming down your face laughter. And how I knew from that, from those moments, we would be okay.
Thank you, Maleah.
It's good when your children can help you to see and feel one of your greatest strengths: the ability to laugh and dispell tension and anger and other negativity. And to let go of some of the baggage of life, and leave it behind you, that is a gift. That's a gift.
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