I had a stress test this week. Because when I went on vacation this winter when I went out into the water for the first time it felt like my chest had cold fingers stretched inside it, for a long minute. The water was beautiful, crisp and the sunlight had worked out a mutually beneficial arrangement with it. The fingers eventually retracted and maybe it was all my imagination.
I had a stress test because I had a checkup and told a doctor. They shaved my chest in a few places and stuck EKG wires on the cleared skin, then I got on a treadmill. Printer paper spat out the results like a seismograph.
At the end of the test the computer froze. The Windows hourglass for suspense. The tech and the nurse said that happens sometimes. Then the printer changed its pace and a single dense sheet like a photograph started to print. It looked like a Cornell box. An aged wooden box painted navy blue, held together by rusty nails. The box was open so you could see the objects inside. A long lock of a woman's hair. A diecast replica of the Space Shuttle Challenger. A birthday card from my mom's mom that I thought I hadn't saved. And all the mean things I'd ever said to you. They said that happens sometimes, and they'd send the results on to my GP.
We were good friends and that made it seem perfect for us to work together. I know how we pictured it was different than how it turned out. It ended up with both of us stuck pushing forever in opposite directions. It's painful to me because we did good work together. None of it changed the world (which was different from how I pictured it.) But maybe some of it prevented the world from getting worse in small areas that two other people wouldn't have noticed. Maybe it stalled some inevitable decline.
Man, I'm proud of you for seeing we were stuck and making a change. I think I would have been willing to keep pushing until it broke. Maybe it did break and I didn't notice. I'm sorry it got to this. But I wish you well.
The other day in the office you had all your papers in trash bags. A decade worth of records of your good fight. I'm glad I got to help you with some of that. I'm sorry so much energy got wasted trying to make you see my perfect vision of the world.
My hope is that when this shakes out and I'm over here and you're over there we can think of each other and know the other one is trying to make things better. That neither of us is alone in that. Maybe one day we'll be able to talk about it.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
