These Days

Yesterday: A fender bender.

Today: A new president.

Tomorrow: Braces for my oldest son.

**

That poor woman, jammed between my car and a parked car, she tried to miss me. I tried to get out of her way. Little I could do at a downhill stoplight with cars in front of me. Little she could do with her foot heavy on the break, her heart pounding as she rolled into a car in which she could see backseat passengers. My children.

No one was hurt. But still, the boys jumped from the car at the moment of impact. Memory is a tricky thing. Last time someone rear-ended us, six years ago (a man attending to his tiny pooch in the passenger’s seat sandwiched us between two trucks), the engine started on fire. We couldn’t open my youngest son’s door. Everyone scrambling to get him out. Me, afterward, darting in and out of the front seat to save my books while oil shot from the dashboard vents.

I was angry at the woman. The boys knew it, could see it in my scowl. Inconvenienced. The boys had dentist appointments just around the corner.

The anger, as it should have been (or better not at all), was short-lived. I felt bad for the woman, in town just for a business meeting (which, she said, went well anyway). Her daughter’s in law school. This isn’t going to help her insurance payments. Her car was more beat-up than mine.

Yesterday, I wanted road salt. To stop in a timely fashion. In all things.

**

Aretha sang and Biden raised his hand. The violin rang and Obama raised his. He spoke, and we all stopped to listen. It is as he’s been saying. And it is more. We are hopeful.

Today, as a people, a deeper sense of hope.

**

They’re going to change my son’s face. They’ve shown me; it’s charted out. He held his jaw as the orthodontist directed, and I could see. A different boy. The same boy. My boy. Makes my throat hot.

Of course thirteen is a tough age to begin with. A boy wants to meld his sweaty palm in his girl’s and (if he’s lucky) kiss her in a dark corner of a dance and not tangle their metal (as he’s said). At thirteen, no one needs to offer further ammunition to those would-be bullies. This, he doesn’t worry. This, I don’t really worry.

Tomorrow, my son’s new face.