I Know What I Know

Part I. Reunions

Last weekend, I drove myself home for my tenth high school reunion. (Yes, writing that makes me feel alarmingly old.) I hadn't been home to see my parents since school let out, and it seemed as good an excuse as any to head back to Pennsylvania.

Amazingly, for most of my former classmates, life has been kind. The class troublemakers became productive citizens. The class conservatives turned into hoochie mommas. The teen mothers found happiness, jobs. Almost everyone gained a ton of weight.

And me? The verdict on my change was that I was somehow bolder and more relaxed than I used to be. At least, until one of my old friends said I was always that way, but no one ever really talked to me.

Everyone wanted me to go out to the bar with them afterwards, and I think when I went home to check on my dog, I had intended to go. But then the Sadness crept over me, and I stayed home, watching Canadian television, alone in my parents' house while they were at a party of their own.

Part II. The Sadness

The Sadness is what the Sadness is. I could give you its full genealogy, track it back to its parentage, its birth. I could show you its footprints in the Virginian earth, and where my own steps have followed it. But I won't, not until it tells me its last secret, the one hidden in the darkest recess of its throat.

What I know about it is that it will lead me to the place where I am past it. I can see its vanishing point from here. Only I don't know if I have the strength to walk there.

Part III. Summer School

Otherwise, I'm teaching summer school. I have children from the middle school where I don't work. They are beautiful children, who seem to want to learn. The days fly past. Before long, I'll be back, slogging through my job, waking up every day before the sun. You can see how much I'm looking forward to it.

Part IV. Blackberry Jam

The beautiful thing about my Sadness is how it lifts me into joys that I have to find for myself. The sound of a vulture launching from a tree branch is like an arrow shot from a bow. There a tiny purple flowers growing in my compost pile. Tadpoles are growing feet in a puddle down the street from me. I rearranged an entire room of my apartment, cleaned it with a precision that even my OCD former roommate might approve of.

I've come to love the simplest of domestic tasks, especially the ones that I doubt I can perform for myself.

If you want to make blackberry jam, you can put on your old jacket and jeans, socks and shoes, and walk through the rain-damp grass. Pick for two hours for the ten cups of berries you'll need, get a dozen light scrapes on the back of your right hand--one across the wrist. Buy the jars, the sugar (organic, since the berries are), the pectin. Crush the berries, strain the juice--dark violet, almost red. Stand over the hot stove in the already stifling air, until the five tiny jars are finally full, finally sealed, on your counter.

The several thorns in your skin will fester and make their way out again.

When you go outside, the air will be filled with light and a breeze will blow over your face, clean and sincere as a promise that you will be alright, even if it isn't today. With each breath of wind, you feel hope, the sweet, forward movement of your life.