A day that just wouldn’t let go
John Prine sings: Gonna be a long Monday/Sittin’ all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end/It’s gonna be a long Monday/Stuck like the tick of a clock that’s come unwound again and again.
Truer words were never written or sung. It is Monday night. This day has lasted at least a week already. And I still have miles to go before I sleep, if I do.
I greeted this day at 6:30 a.m. after not sleeping worth a hoot. Stella gets up earlier than that because she’s a weird kid who is obsessive about being on time. She did not get that gene from me. She scares me into having my coffee in hand and being out the door at 7:10 a.m. because I do not want to face her wrath. The wrath of a sixth grader is serious.
God forbid she would have to ride the shuttle bus to her campus in Altus. We must be at the Ozark location for the first bus, and I must not stop the car in front of the boys who are huddled in anticipation of it. I wait for her instructions. It is either halt long before the boys and let her out or pass them and then stop. Depends on where Stella’s friends are gathered.
And I mustn’t dare wave at her friends or try to hug and kiss her goodbye, which I do every time anyway. A parent can only stand so much bossing.
After Stella is deposited, I head to the park to wait on my friend Corrie to walk with me. Mugsy is along because he jumped into the car, and I let him stay. When Corrie gets there with her two dogs, I slip a collar around Mugsy’s neck and fasten the leash Corrie gave me because I did not own a leash.
He acts as if I am preparing him for the guillotine. This is a country thing. Country people do not own leashes because their dogs are wild and free, just like their feral cats. Mugsy is insulted by the idea of a leash. But the affront of being left at home is worse, and so he tolerates it.
The walk is nice. I like to walk with Corrie because she is one of the few people in my MAGA-leaning community who relates to me religiously and politically. Of course she is moving to another state in July. I try my best to guilt her into staying every time we walk, because I am certain I will languish when she leaves, never walk again, and never find another friend who will listen to my ponderings.
She does not feel sorry for me. She laughs when Mugsy does his business and I have to pick it up. She always picks up after her dogs, but I do not because I am a bad person. If I get lucky and he does his business in an area no one will ever go I just leave it, telling myself it is fertilizer. That is heretofore what he has always done because he is a good dog who rarely even gets to go to the park.
But today he has deviated from the norm. I use a biodegradable bag Corrie provides me because she is civilized, and I almost throw up gathering the warm detritus. She guffaws, and I tell her to shut up and talk to me, say words, anything to help me not barf before we reach the trash can. Finally we do, and I find absolution. I also tell Mugsy he is never coming with me again. He does not believe me. Like Stella and the rest of my children, he is not one bit afraid of my threats.
The day worsens from there. When I get back to my car where I left my phone, I have a million texts. I have a hair appointment in 30 minutes, so I decide I have plenty of time to sit in my car and try to answer them. Brother and I get into a deep discussion of basically all the ways I am doing a bad job as a single parent, and I don’t realize it is now 9:33 a.m. and my hair appointment was at 9:30. So I speed to my appointment, answering the angelic Shanda, stylist extraordinaire and friend of 100 years, who has texted me to ask if I am on the way.
Mercifully, the hair goes well. I told Shanda I am tired of being platinum blonde and can she please add some yellow blonde streaks or something. I show her pictures of models I want to look like. She is unfazed, says of course she can do that, and works some voodoo magic on the hair that has always been my enemy.
When she gets done, I am beautiful. All the other people in the shop are shocked and awed. She is sure she is the best stylist on Earth, and I look exactly like those models, and we are both very happy with ourselves. So I leave thinking I am the stuff, and my hair is all ready to dazzle at Adelaide’s athletic banquet coming up that evening, which is of course helpful because I have to face a gaggle of people who don’t know whether to pity me because I am divorced or judge me as some kind of Jezebel. I can’t help them, but at least I can have good hair to get me through the evening.
Except when I am at the bank after getting my hair done Stella texts me, “Mom Mom Mom! I need a white T-shirt for Creative Writing next hour! Can you please go get me one and bring it size youth large hurry!” I say, “Of course I will be there in a minute.” And I go find a shirt at Dollar Tree for $5 and run it out to her campus in Altus, and finally drive home at 12:30 p.m. after also going back to the bank.
I stop at the mailbox. I would usually leave my car door open because I must pull into my driveway and get out and get the mail. But I close it because Mugsy is in there. Still. No doubt regretting his assertiveness about getting in the car when it was early morning, and he had no idea all the errands that lay ahead.
I don’t want him to follow me and get run over on the highway where my mailbox is. I leave the car running with the air on, and my phone in there, because who would take her phone to the mailbox? I get the mail, which is junk except for one graduation announcement of a kid whose parents I love, and walk back to the car.
It is locked. Mugsy has locked it. I sweet-talk him, begging him to step on the button again and unlock it, but he just stares at me like why am I not opening the door and getting in and taking him home where he never wants to leave again? Has he not been through enough?
I engage the futile exercise of checking all of the doors and start praying God will send my parents down the driveway. Perhaps the sudden hankering for a Dari-Delite burger for lunch. A check of the cows on their side-by-side. I’ll take anything. Or send my niece Sophia on one of her Sonic drink runs now that she is finished with school early as a senior. No one comes.
Thus I begin walking, mail in hand, the mile to my house on our gravel driveway. It is hot and muggy. I am wearing a sweatshirt and long pants because it was cool this morning when I left home so long ago. By the time I start up the hill I consider disrobing since no one is likely to see me. Instead, I soldier on in fear of the random FedEx man. My new hair color streams down my face like a blonde Rudy Giuliani. Finally home, I grab my spare key and turn around for the second mile back to go rescue Mugsy.
Later I call my mom to tell her this story. She and Dad are in the truck coming back from Paris where they have obtained two new chairs she spied on Facebook Marketplace. They get a kick out of my tale of woe.
My dad says it sounds like a column to him. My mom says, “I just read the story of Joseph in the Bible this morning and I think you are like him. Highly favored by God.” I tell her God has a funny way of showing it sometimes. She says Joseph probably thought that too.