Inside Verse
1998

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Friday, December 11, 1998
In Stores Now

I saw one of mine in the wild today.

The Christmas verses I wrote in July of last year, under the air conditioning vent in my sweater, are in the stores now. Not many of them. Two made it all the way to cards. One is a box card, the kind you buy twenty of. The other is a single, a long one for "Mother and Dad," and today I was at the drugstore on my lunch hour buying cough drops and there was a woman about my mother's age in the card aisle, reading it.

I pretended to look at wrapping paper. She read it all the way through. Then she read it again. Then she put it in her basket.

I wanted to say, "I wrote that." I didn't, because that's the strangest thing a person could say to you in a drugstore. But I stood there and thought: I wrote that in July of 1997, when I was engaged and happy and sure of everything, and I'm not any of those things now, and it doesn't matter. The card doesn't know. It just goes to her parents and says what she meant.

There's something in that I'm going to have to think about. Maybe with Cheryl.

Sunday, October 25, 1998
Happy Retirement

Dad is retiring. He told us at dinner today the way he tells us everything, which is in the middle of something else: "Pass the potatoes. I put my papers in. April thirtieth. These are good potatoes."

Thirty-five years on the railroad. He started in 1964, the year he married Mom, working in the yard, and he's been a conductor most of the time since. His railroad has changed its name twice since he hired on. He's ridden freight across Kansas in blizzards and floods. He missed a lot of birthdays and he never missed a single one of my recitals, and I didn't understand until I was grown how much switching and begging that must have taken.

And the funny thing is, this month at work I'm on the retirement line. I've been writing "Happy Retirement" verses all week: for teachers and nurses and bosses and "a wonderful co-worker." I know all the moves. You've earned it. Enjoy every moment. Now the real work begins (golf). I could write you a perfectly good retirement card in about four minutes.

I can't write one for Dad. I tried tonight. I've got until April.

Sunday, September 13, 1998
Expecting

Deanna is pregnant. Due in February. She called me first, before she called Mom, and she was crying and laughing, and I was crying and laughing, and Rodger was in the background yelling, "Tell her about the heartbeat!"

I'm going to be an aunt. I am so happy. I want to say that before anything else, and I want to say it plainly, because the other thing I felt was small, and I'm ashamed of it. For about a second after I hung up, I thought: that was supposed to be me next. I had it all planned. Married in June, a house by the next summer, a baby after that. I'd even picked names, privately, the way you do.

Then the second passed and I went to the bookstore and bought her a book about what to expect, and a tiny Royals cap, and drove them over.

Cheryl says I'm allowed to have both feelings at once. I said that sounds like a card. She said maybe it's a good card.

Tuesday, July 28, 1998
Thinking of You

I started seeing a therapist. Three weeks ago now. I'm saying it here because I've decided I'm not going to be embarrassed about it, and the best way I know to not be embarrassed about something is to write it down and let strangers read it.

Her name is Cheryl. Her office is on the second floor of a house in Midtown, and it has a couch, an armchair, a box of the tissues with lotion in them, and a view of a very large tree. Tuesdays at five-thirty. My insurance pays for some of it and I pay for the rest by not buying anything else.

Today she said: "You write what other people want to hear for a living. When was the last time you said what you wanted?"

I sat there. The tree moved. I did not have an answer. I'm a professional. Words are my entire job. I didn't have any.

It's not about Travis, she says, or not only. It's about a lot of things. We're going to find out what.

Saturday, June 20, 1998
(blank inside)

Today was the day. Two o'clock, at the church.

Deanna showed up at my apartment at nine this morning with coffee, a cooler and a full tank of gas, and said, "Get in the car." We drove to the lake. We didn't talk about it. We floated around in two inner tubes tied together with a jump rope, and ate pimento cheese sandwiches, and she told me about every bad boyfriend she ever had before Rodger, in order, with details, some of which I'd never heard. At two o'clock exactly she looked at her watch, then looked at me and said, "Well?" And I said, "I'm OK." And I was, for about an hour. Then I wasn't, and then I was again.

Some cards are blank inside. They're for people who'd rather write their own words, or for times there aren't any. This is a blank-inside day.

Wednesday, May 20, 1998
Congratulations on Your Engagement

Barbara, who hands out the assignments, didn't know, or forgot. This month I'm on wedding and engagement.

I didn't ask to switch. I'm a professional. I sat down Monday and wrote "To the Bride and Groom" eleven times. I wrote "Two hearts, one home." I wrote "Here's to forever." I wrote my way all the way through June, which is when people get married, and which is when I was going to.

Today Barbara came by my desk with a stack of my verses and stood there a minute. Then she said, very quietly, "Oh, honey. You should have said something." She moved me to Get Well for the rest of the month. Get Well is fine. I can do Get Well. Feel better. Thinking of you. Hurry back. Sometimes the simplest thing is the kindest. Barbara knows that better than anyone.

Sunday, April 12, 1998
Easter

Easter at Mom and Dad's. Nobody said Travis's name. Mom made the ham and cried a little in the kitchen and said it was the onions, and there were no onions.

Dad didn't say anything at all to me about it. After dinner he went out to the driveway and changed the oil in my car and rotated the tires and fixed the thing on the windshield wiper I'd been ignoring since Christmas. It took him two hours. When he came in, he washed his hands, kissed me on top of my head, and went back to his chair. That was the whole conversation. It was the best one I've had in two weeks.

The hall gave back half the deposit. The church was very kind. The dress is going back to the shop on consignment. I have a box of three hundred invitations that say June 20, and I don't know what to do with them. You can't recycle them. Somebody might read them.

Sunday, March 29, 1998
No Card for This

Travis and I aren't getting married.

He told me Friday night, at his kitchen table, with his hands flat on it like he was holding it down. He said he loves me. He said he's tried to make himself want this, all of it, the wedding and the house and the kids and the forever, and he can't, and he's not sure he ever will, and he didn't want to find that out after June. He said he was sorry about forty times. He cried more than I did. I believe him. That's the worst part. If he were a villain this would be so much easier to write.

I gave him the ring back. I left his key on the table. I drove home and sat in the parking lot of my building for an hour with the engine off.

I've written cards for almost everything that can happen to a person. Births, deaths, divorces, new jobs, lost jobs, graduations, surgeries, pets. We don't make a card for this. There's no rack in any store in America for "Sorry Your Fiancé Doesn't Want to Get Married." And if there were, I wouldn't know what to put inside.

Monday, March 16, 1998
Proofs

The invitations came back from the printer as proofs, and we went with Mom's version after all, with the u in "honour." I brought them over to Travis's on Saturday night to look at, and he looked at them for about three seconds and said, "Looks great," and went back to the basketball game.

I know he's tired. It's tax season. He's at the office until nine every night and Saturdays too, and this is the worst time of year to ask an accountant to care about the font on a reply card. That's all it is.

That's all it is, I'm writing here, so I'll believe it.

Saturday, February 14, 1998
Be Mine

An occupational hazard of writing cards is that you can't receive one without reading it like an editor. Travis gave me a big one with a red satin heart on the front and a long verse inside, rhymed, and I caught myself thinking, "That second line has an extra beat," and hated myself.

Dinner at the Italian place, roses, the whole thing. He was sweet and very quiet. I asked if anything was wrong and he said no, just tired, tax season's starting. He held my hand across the table the whole meal, so tight. I keep thinking about how tight.

For the record, the valentine I gave him was blank inside, and I wrote it myself, and it took me three nights, and it was short.

Sunday, January 18, 1998
Ha Ha

New year, new resolution: I want to write humor.

The humor writers sit in their own corner on our floor, and they're louder than the rest of us, and they have a rubber chicken that gets passed around as an award. Joe Beshears, who has been in humor for eight years and is the funniest person I've ever met in real life, said I could sit in on their brainstorm Thursday if I brought doughnuts. I brought two dozen. Nobody laughed at anything I said for forty-five minutes. Then I said something by accident about my mother's Christmas sweaters and the whole room fell apart, and Joe pointed at me and said, "That. Write that."

So I tried. Here's what I turned in:

(Cover) Another year older, and you haven't changed a bit!
(Inside) Seriously. Same sweater.

Joe read it and said, "That's a joke about your sister. It's not a card for your sister. Who sends this?" He's right. A humor card still has to love somebody. That's the whole trick. I had no idea.

Also, I've left-aligned my paragraphs. A friend wrote to say that reading my journal was like reading a very long wedding invitation. She meant it nicely. I think.

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