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It's almost December. Why hasn't this little tree even started to turn?
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My little reason for living got straight A's on her report card. I am celebrating appropriately.
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Melinda had been adrift for quite some time. Perhaps as far back as the mid 90's when her father had his first stroke. Back then life revolved around Daddy. Daddy set the agenda and the pace. Work filled Melinda's 9 to 5. Daddy took care of the rest of the hours Melinda wasn't sleeping. She bowled with him, went to his barbecues, supported his civic projects, attended church with him.

Now Daddy barely knew he was in the world. And Mommy's time was taken up with his care.

Melinda had her job, but little else. Many of her friends had married or moved. She dated some. But the men she knew were either too preoccupied with themselves or fairly brazen about making Melinda the next conquest. Naturally none of these men measured up to Daddy. Which was not a deal breaker. She knew the inherent the futility of even considering that she'd ever find a man as solid as her father.
But Melinda was tired of being alone. She wanted someone on her side. She wanted companionship. She wanted a co-conspirator. Melinda craved intimacy, physical and otherwise. Living untethered from her father had become unnerving. She needed to shake things up. She needed a way to shake herself awake.

In tried and true middle-American fashion, Melinda settled on retail therapy as the cure for her malaise.
Melinda decided that getting a new pair of glasses would turn the trick. A new look. A new start. Somewhere to begin. Her old glasses had gone out of style somewhere during Clinton's 2nd term. It was past time.

She hit the malls. All of them. Several times. Shockingly she found nothing that struck her. Nothing that would set her apart.

Finding these new glasses became an obsession. It kept her up nights. She pored over catalogues and frantically clicked through web sites at work. She even tried the Eyeglass Hut at the local teen infested discount mall.

Eventually, amazingly, Miraculously Melinda found the perfect pair of eyeglass frames while traveling out of town for work. She wasn't even looking for them when she hit upon them. But they were perfect!

She paid for the frames on the spot and made arrangements for them to be shipped to her optometrist back home once her prescription had been fitted to them.

She literally skipped out of the store.

The glasses arrived on a Thursday and Melinda made a 2:30 appointment to pick them up. The glasses proved to be an adequate salve for Melinda's mood. They improved her outlook. They made her feel special. And for a time she believed and acted in a manner that indicated that she was indeed someone to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately the only person that truly cared for Melinda any longer was trapped inside his own mind.

After he died she filled her free hours with polishing his memory and waiting for her mother to join him.
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Fortunately the patient is improving. We hit the road for Michigan in a few.
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Super Girl brought her posse by last night
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Our first customer. She said "thenk koo" without being prompted from mom.
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Notice the people milling about afterwards, laughing? These are my fellow runners... laughing. Did I mention that they were laughing? These people are sick.
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Bobby had long ago learned to live with ambiguity. Had even concocted the notion that resentment and love could coexist. One was a reaction, the other, a choice. The former was transitory, the latter, enduring. Assuming it was actually love.
Besides resentment was usually misplaced. Bobby knew from his own circumstances. He resented Management because they often took advantage of him. But Bobby had long ago opened the door for their bullying by his extreme passivity. People are like rain on a leaky roof. They will exploit any opening.
Like Bobby's wife.
Mrs. Bobby always worked the angles, always thought three moves ahead. She lived perpetually in the future. Not that she was malicious. Mrs. Bobby was patient, and kind, and very bright. And Bobby loved her for it. He just felt isolated from her, even in her presence.
And sometimes he found it hard to tamp down the resentment.
However Bobby was self aware enough to understand his own responsibility for the way things were. He chose to hold back his feelings from her. He chose to pretend everything was okay. Better yet, he chose her. She had been content to live her life without him.
Bobby fought the temptation to see his life as a tragedy, a series of wrong (though not necessarily bad) choices. However the urge was still strong. He was not doing what he wanted to do. He was not getting what he wanted. He was increasingly nagged by the notion that even though his life surely wasn't bad, it just wasn't right, that it wasn't what was "meant" for him.
Bobby began to wonder about an alternate destiny for his life. And that perhaps he'd missed it.
So it was that Bobby found himself at Walmart at 5:00 a.m. with Mrs. Bobby's list of essentials required before heading to Seattle on business, needing Bobby to go because she had an "Early Bird Step Class" at the gym. Bobby was pretty bleary from staying up most of the night to finish a last minute assignment that had been foisted upon him as he literally walked out the door for the day.
He was deep into his victim-hood, loading Mrs. Bobby's supplies, when he glanced up to see the most glorious sunrise that he'd ever seen. Full of bursting joyous color that he couldn't begin to describe. It fairly sang.
In truth Bobby was a rather dull and pointless little man who had little poetry in his soul. But one day in his very near future he would find a way to describe that moment to someone who would be inspired to create art that would touch people's lives.
For the moment, in the now, Bobby was Happy. It might have been transitory. But at least it was his choice.
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