The Blue Van

I walk my dog in the cemetery on Washington Avenue. Actually, we go back through the bike path and past the water treatment plant, but we park in the cemetery and start from there. It's a nice place for a walk, and there are often others about, either in the cemetery or along the bike path.

One cold and rainy day (Keller, my dog, can often convince me to take him even on the worst days. His powers of persuasion are impressive) I decided to take a different route, not along the bike path, but swinging around to a newer section of the cemetery. This route is shorter, and I would never be more than a sprint away from where I'd parked the car, in case the sky decided to make good on its promise of a downpour.

I was walking with my head down, chin tucked against the wind, leaden clouds scuttling low overhead, when I noticed a blue van parked alongside the access road in front of me. I was a bit surprised. The cemetery was deserted that day and this was the first car I'd seen. The van was empty. I lifted my head and glanced about for the driver, casting my gaze up and down the rows of markers. I found him sitting in front of a tombstone about twenty yards away. He was wearing a blue windbreaker, the wind lifting a lock of his gray hair. His back was to me. I never saw his face.

Have you ever arrived at church after the service has started and had to sneak into the back? That's the way I felt with this man in this cemetery. I turned off my mp3 player and tiptoed past, keeping to the far side of the road, careful not even to jiggle the tags on my dog's collar. He could not have heard me, but that didn't matter. Something about this scene demanded my deference. I soon as I was past I glanced back to see if I had disturbed him. He hadn't moved.

In the days that followed I passed by the cemetery often. Every time, I looked for the blue van. Three or four times I spotted it there, although I have not seen it in recent months.

I think of the old man every now and then, sitting in front of that tombstone. I imagine he comes to talk to his wife, to tell her news of the children, although he doesn't hear much. They are, after all, busy spinning lives of their own. I imagine he tells her of her flowerbeds. He's still watering them. They need weeded but he's afraid to do so, fearing he will pull the flowers with the weeds. He tells her what he has read in the newspaper, who has died and who is ill, who has married and who has divorced. He tells her he needs to eat better but has little desire to do so. He tells her he's no longer angry that she left him, that the pain he felt at her passing has faded, leaving in its place only an emptiness he cannot fill.

He rises then and folds his chair, wincing at the pain that has crept into his knees. He places a hand upon the cold stone and tells her to wait for him, to be patient, he will be along shortly. A minute later the van roars to life and the cemetery is empty, motionless save for leaves blowing against the ground.

NaNoWriMo

I'm constantly telling myself three things: I need to exercise more, write more, and eat less. Three lofty goals, to be sure, and I'm proud of them. So proud, in fact, that I repeat them almost every morning, rattling them off in my head like virtual prayer beads, only to be forgotten by the time I've gotten home for work. It's too easy put things off, to wait until tomorrow, to mark time until that magical day when we actually do something. Inertia is a powerful force, and before we realize it, the days have piled up, the years have passed, and we can only gaze in wonder at all the time lost.

Enter NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writer's Month. For those who aren't familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is an arbitrary line that hundreds of thousands of people draw in the sand each year, setting aside the month of November to achieve the patently absurd goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. I've participated three times. I've only won once.

I was going to skip NaNo this year, because, you know, I have important things to do, like watch season four of Lost. However, a close friend of mine called to tell me that he had signed up, and to inquire as to whether I was participating. Well of course I am! Wouldn't miss it for the world. You know I do it every year. I'm looking forward to it!

So anyway, I'm signed up again. And you know what? I am looking forward to it. This is the power of NaNoWriMo. There's something galvanizing about sitting down on that first day, staring at a blank page, and realizing that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are doing the same thing. Will your novel be good? Probably not. Will it be yours? Most definitely. And that in and of itself is worthy of the effort.

** Want to learn more? Head to http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and check it out.

Yellow Bandaids

When I was little, I spent a lot of my time at my grandma's house. I remember everything was old and lacey, with lots of strange items and artifacts. There was a shelf full of seashells and strange exotic rocks. On the desk was a little bottle of water with a sponge at the end used to lick stamps. My grandmother was diabetic, and whenever I was around she would let me drop one of the saccharin tablets she used to sweeten her tea into her cup. We would sit together in her sunlit kitchen and watch them dissolve. Upon her nightstand she kept the biggest bottle of Rolaids I'd ever seen. I thought they were candy, and sneaked one every time I was there. She's been gone close to twenty years now, but every now and then something will spark a memory of her; some taste, smell or sound will transport me back to her and I will be with her again, if only for a moment. It happened the other day, strangely enough with a band aid.

As a child, I was constantly getting scrapes and bruises. This is true of any child, and like any mother mine kept a constant supply of antibiotic and bandages, tinctures and ointments. I remember sitting on the toilet as she reached into the medicine chest and pulled out the little bottle of Mercurochrome, its white label marked with a small red cross. I would squirm as she painted on the red stuff, it's bite stinging more than the wound. I suspected it was some kind of backhand punishment for getting injured. But then she would let me open the band aid, and all was forgiven. It was crisp and fresh and had a little red string you pulled to release it, a band aid ripcord. I loved opening them. Then I would be back outside, warnings of not to do whatever it was I had been doing ringing in my ears.

I'm not nearly as injury prone these days, but I have recently started exercising again and have cultivated a few calluses from the rowing machine. So foreign are these fruits of physical labor that I can't leave them alone. I absently pick at them until they are red and raw. I decided to cover them and went into the bathroom to get a band aid. I opened the box on the sink and was suddenly back in my grandmother's house again. Whereas my mother's band aids were always shiny and new, my grandmother's band aids were yellow with age, the wrappers falling off of them like ancient Egyptian mummy wrappings. Here in my own bathroom I was holding one of these artifacts, a band aid yellowed with age, the wrapper falling away like an autumn leaf. Only these weren't my grandmother's band aids. I remember buying them at Kroger.

The days slip away, and we don't always have proof of the passage of time, but here in my hand was a reminder. I've lived long enough to have yellow band aids like my grandmother. I suppose that's a victory of sorts.