Full Circle

(published in 115 Vernon, the Writing Associates journal of Trinity College)

Did you ever want the world?  Have the whole thing on a platter, just for you to pick up and grind your teeth into.  And it should be delivered, gift-wrapped, even.  Made out in your name, a tag with gilt letters, maybe in script or that Olde English-ey font.  Official stuff.  All tied up in a red bow, sitting out in the driveway one fine morning like they show in all of those luxury car commercials.

So the commercial world awaits you, while you commence the waiting aspect of this delivery-of-the-world scenario, since that’s your job.  You might as well get a standard-type job that comes with a paycheck, because even waiting can cost a few beans.  This job is probably entry-level, barely skilled but getting by slots that no-degree folks can fill on the spot without messing up too much.  Maybe you like it.  Maybe you find a keen interest in the secular divestment of offshore funds, or discover that underwriting is your newest temporary passion.  You move up, find some extra cash tossed your way.  Things are good.  Still checking for that package, unconsciously, like glancing at the top of your hair in the mirror or using the waiting time at the copier to inconspicuously vouch for the closure of your fly.

Time flies.  So do birds.  Maybe you get a bird, once you move into your own apartment.  Maybe your love interest brings along his or her own quadrupedal equivalent of a child, that you are not so much compelled as resigned to co-opt for the purposes of bliss and harmony.  It’s not so bad.  Lots of days, it’s good.  Really good.  And it’s okay that the package hasn’t arrived yet.  There’s not really a place for it unless they leave it down in the visitor lot, and then someone unscrupulous might tear off your gilded nametag and claim the luxury world as their own.  That would suck.

But nothing prepares you for the sight of your newborn son suckling his mother for the first time.  A chasm opens before you, and the selfish, narrow-sighted person you were sloughs off into it with a whisper of release, like a chrysalis loosening from the folds of your soft, elastic wings.  As you breathe you spread yourself out in all dimensions, including the invisible ones, invigorated with a purpose you had not felt since you were three, on the rug in your grandparents’ house by the beach, determined to make all the shells line up straight in a row even if the horned-shaped one kept wanting to roll off to another board.  There is a concentration in your soul that’s been missing so long you forgot it was ever there.  Determination renews your step as you take them two at a time, knowing that you will get the last of the department store items tucked away just as they should be before he comes home, to your home.

Your home might be mortgaged for twice its net worth, but it won’t matter much.  Unless you are “down-sized”, like some reverse-McDonaldian venture of backward acquisition.  Any clean dress on a pig does not change the genus, phylum, or class of that reeking pig.  So one day, over the bills but under the kids’ papers with assorted and noteworthy As and stars and stickers, there’s an ad for  a program, a college thing for adults who Want a Change.  The number’s toll-free, the website’s inviting and promises the courses you thought about taking but weren’t really interested in, just as a dodge to keep yourself somewhere between parental satisfaction and flunking out.  They look good.  Some of them look really good.  So you call.  Then you go.

And one day, a couple years down the road, you’re looking down the road at this line of kids and grown-ups and teachers all decked out in the pouf de rigueur, satin Black, mortarboard Cocked, attitude Chill.  And you think what a fine damn world it is.  And you can’t wait to get out there and take a huge bite, grind your teeth right into it and pull.  And you’re so glad you reached out to grab it.

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