(With a glass or two of red wine, so you can handle the reality.)

Then volunteer. Or foster. Hug your own kid!

Or be a listening ear for the kid down the street.

It does take
a village.

On the 747

by Malena Morling

As soon as I sat down
the seven year old girl
offered me gum
and showed me a postcard
of the airplane we were in.
She was writing her mother
whom she had just left at the gate,
smearing her love
in blue magic marker.
Then she pulled out a drawing
she had made of the wind
and one of a cloud
and a man who had ladders
for legs and eight arms
extending eight hands.
After the heavy body of the plane
lifted off the ground,
she held my hand and talked
about her flute teacher’s birds
and the eels she had bought
in a bait store and let loose
on the beach, each one
slithering into the dark
of the green waves,
returning to what she said
she could not imagine.

-Joseph Stroud

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

*agh*

“You wanna test dribe?” “Oh, no! Just looking, thanks!” “C’mon, you test dribe. I get you a car. You keep overnight. Whatever you want!” Realizing I probably have over an hour to sit and wait, I explain that at this moment I am not looking for a new car, but in a few months when I sell my damn book I will be, and therefore I’d love a test drive to whet my appetite for a new car. I choose one I’d never buy but would lust for~ the Sequoia. Yummy. Well, it’s huge and handles like a truck (I felt 20 feet off the ground) but what a fun test drive. I climb up behind the wheel, Fredie hops with amazing agility into the passenger seat, and we take off.

“So, how long have you been a Toyota salesman?” I ask. Small talk. Polite.
“Six yearbs. I only work Toyota. I lib my job. No family, only mother. I work all da time. Work my home- ha! I employee of da year three yearbs. I hope this year also. I have no life outside my work.”
“Wow, so you are not married, no kids?”
“No. I have ex-wife in da Phillipines. Mother here- she libs wid me. She want me to have baby! I say first I need… you know, partner!” He gestures gently.
“So do you date?”
“No! I just tell you- I work! My manager want me to go to club wid them. Every once in while it okay to go, but every night? No. I am not teenager anymore. I am 47 yearbs old. The lady I hope to meet is not teenager eider. She is not in club anymore eider. We are older. We know what to do.” He shakes his head and makes an “aw, shucks” movement with his hand. He looks out the window, silent.

We are older. We know what to do. We don’t have to play the games the young mating-aged “animals” play. The sexy, teeth-bared predator-prey dance has softened. We may have kids, or have had a marriage or longer relationship that was for all intents and purposes a marriage. We know what to do. Don’t we?

Fredie speaks again, “If I meet a lady, I like her, I tell her. Is this not what I should do? This is what I do! What is difficult is when after one week, one month, she change! Why she change? I like her. I want to like real HER! She say first week, ‘O, I am silent type!’ Next week, she will yell at me! Not silent! Not her. Why she change? I like her already first time.”

Internally, I am processing that what I hear from Fredie seems to be (in my limited experience) what most single men his age want. A wife. A woman to love and by her be loved. Beloved. A family. Children. Assurance of future. Present bliss. Work, yes, more work- but the GOOD KIND. The fulfilling kind. The soul-work we are here to do. Men appear to be so simple and real in this desire. They want a woman to take care of them, and a woman to care for and find refuge in from the cares of the day, the storms outside the front door. Solace, every infant knows, can be found in the bosom of a good woman. I sneak a look over at Fredie’s face. He is so sincere. How do we- men and women- perplex each other to extremes, then?

Suddenly, I hear a bird in the car. Definitely trapped in the car with us, it is so loud. Fredie pulls out his phone- it is his ringtone! When he hangs up, he explains that there are many nests in the trees outside the dealership. He likes hearing the birds, so one day he took his phone and held it up and recorded the singing of the birds. He then saved it as his ringtone. It is beautiful and clear and true. It tells me more about Fredie- a man who likes nature, a man with a gentle heart who hears birdsong while he works.

As we cruise back into the dealership parking lot, I tell Fredie about computer dating sites. He laughs and says his friends say he should do that, too. His mother would like to have a baby at home to keep her company. A wife. He would like these things. We sit in the car for a moment.

“Maybe, maybe dere is someone for me. I like to think. I think out dere, is a lady, and she for me, and we know what to do.”

and then

“You not forget to call me when you want this ess-you-bee. Sequoia nice ess-you-bee. You call Fredie.”

Deal.

Kneel down in my skeleton form

and scrub it

scrub scrub scrub

scrub away

thorns

debris

detritus

muck

scrub away at the inside of it

and then

carefully

put it back on.