The Other Side of the Street

It's coming on dark by the time the weekend wraps up and I'm tired and cold and hungry as I make the final turns through my neighborhood and head for the driveway. Lights are burning in most the windows and on front porches and I almost missed seeing the cat - she came out of nowhere, streaking like a shot directly in front of me - I hit the brakes so sharply everything on the passenger seat went flying and for an intense second, I could barely breathe. When I found my voice, it was to curse enthusiastically and at length but also a little gratefully. Another few seconds either way could have been tragic.

It started me thinking about timing and how a seemingly insignificant second here or there can make a difference even if you don't know it at the time. And that led me to the choices we make and how we often don't see where they'll lead. Life, as Stephen King writes in his novel about time travel, turns on a dime. Every step is a crossroad - some clear and well marked, some as treacherous at that miracle of traffic engineering, the New England rotary - where a single misstep can lead to oblivion.

Assuming all goes well, I will enter my 7^th decade this year and I'm still trying to comprehend how it's possible. I'm not even sure I completely imagined living this long.

Some days all I seem to see are empty spaces - friends who should still be here and aren't, children who have grown to have children of their own, husbands and lovers I barely recognize anymore, distant and left over family whose names I can't recall. I feel like a stranger in a world being steadily unmade into an image of greed and hate, wealth and white-ness. I feel like I don't have a place anymore. I feel alone. I'm accustomed to intersections with signs and traffic lights and speed limits and I'm trapped in a New England rotary circle with no safe exit. The cat who streaks mindlessly across in front of me doesn't look both ways. She risks her life with every step and isn't aware of it and I'm beginning to understand how she feels. I can't imagine what could be on the other side of the street that matters so much.

As for me, I feel done. Not depressed or suicidal or ready to give up but ready to stop what my friend Michael calls “striving”. I don't want a new house or a better, fancier car. I wore out my interest in expensive jewelry and designer clothes years ago. Material things make me tired. I'm beginning to suspect that I've told all the stories I wanted to tell and taken all the pictures I have in me. I can't see there's anything left to do. There's something faintly sad about the feeling but there's also something remarkably liberating about it, as if I've made peace with something unknown, something uncertain, unfocused and bound to be bad. It feels like mourning but with an expiration date and not to be morbid, but I can't say I'm sorry that I'll miss the finale.