Inside Verse
January to June 1999

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Saturday, June 26, 1999
Running Into You

I saw Travis today, at the grocery store, in the cereal aisle. He was with a woman with short dark hair who was laughing at something he'd said. He saw me before I could do the thing where you suddenly become very interested in oatmeal.

For fifteen months I've been writing, in my head, the speech I'd give if this ever happened. I've had drafts. I've had revisions. I've had a version with a quote from Jane Austen in it.

What I actually said was, "Hi, Travis. You look good." Which was true. He said, "You too, Yvette. You really do." He introduced her. Her name is something I've already forgotten, honestly forgotten, not pretend. We talked for about a minute about his brother's new truck. Then we said "take care" and pushed our carts in opposite directions.

And that was it. I bought my cereal. I drove home. I sat in the parking lot for about three minutes this time, instead of an hour, and then I went upstairs and called Deanna and said, "Guess who," and she said, "Are you OK?" and I listened for a second to find out, and I said yes.

Cheryl and I have gone from every week to every other week. She says that's what it looks like when it's working: you need it a little less.

Sunday, May 23, 1999
Just Because

After church, Darrell asked if I'd ever been to the Nelson. I've lived in Kansas City my entire life, and I've been to the art museum maybe four times, all of them on school field trips, in a line, holding a partner's hand. He goes once a month. He says it's the only place in town where nobody needs anything from him.

So we went. We walked through all of it, slowly, mostly not talking. He likes the big landscapes, the ones with a lot of sky. I liked the small dark paintings in the corners that nobody else was looking at, which says something about me I'm not going to examine today. Then we sat on the lawn by the giant shuttlecocks and ate the sandwiches he'd brought in a paper sack, and he confessed that he'd lived here four years before he realized they were badminton birdies.

That's all. Nothing happened. Nothing is happening. We're two people from the choir who went to a museum. I want to be very clear with the internet about that, and with myself.

There's a whole line of cards called "Just Because." No birthday, no holiday, no occasion. Just because I thought of you. They don't sell as well as birthday cards. People need a reason. I've always liked them best anyway.

Sunday, May 2, 1999
Thirty-Five Years

Dad's retirement party was Friday night, in the party room at the bowling alley, because that's where the railroad men have had every party since 1970. About sixty people came: men he worked with, men he worked for, men who worked for him, and their wives, and a few widows, and his old engineer, who is eighty-one and drove himself and told everyone about it.

There was a sheet cake shaped like a locomotive. There was a slide show on a sheet hung on the wall. There was a lot of talking about a flood in 1993 and a blizzard in some year nobody could agree on.

I gave the toast. I never did write him the card. Six months I tried. Every draft came out sounding like it was for some other man's father. So on Friday I stood up with nothing on paper and a glass of ginger ale and said what I could remember of what I'd been trying to write. That when I was little I thought he went away on the trains to work and came back with the weather on him, cold or rain or snow on his coat. That he missed a lot of my birthdays, but never one recital. That I know now what that took. That he taught me you can say a lot by changing someone's oil. That the railroad is getting back a lot less than it got.

I don't know what else I said. Mom says it was about two minutes long. When I sat down, Dad looked at the tablecloth for a while. Then he stood up for his own speech and said, "Thank you all. I'm going fishing," and sat back down, and everybody laughed and clapped. On the way out to the car he put his arm around me, which he does about once a decade, and said, "That was good." Which is the most anything I've ever written has ever gotten out of him, including the card with the fish on it.

Sunday, March 28, 1999
Funny You Should Say

Barbara came by my desk Thursday with a humor verse of mine, and on it, in pencil, it said "YES. Funny. Who's it for? Everyone's sister."

It's going forward. My first humor card. It's a birthday card for a sister, from a sister:

(Cover) Happy birthday to the one person who knows every embarrassing thing I ever did.
(Inside) Let's keep it that way. Love you. Cake's on me.

It's not going to win any prizes. But it loves somebody, which Joe told me fourteen months ago was the whole trick, and it sounds like something a person would say. Joe gave me the rubber chicken for the weekend. It's on my kitchen table right now, looking at me.

Also, today was Palm Sunday, and the choir sang the anthem we've been rehearsing since February, and we didn't fall apart, and I didn't think once about the fact that the last time I stood in that sanctuary in front of people I was practicing walking down the aisle. Well. Once.

Darrell and I have now had coffee after rehearsal three Wednesdays in a row, at the diner on Main. He's a chemistry teacher. He talks about his students the way my dad talks about trains. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Monday, February 22, 1999
Words Fail

Kyla is nineteen days old and I still haven't written her a card.

Let me be accurate. Since she was born I've written more than sixty new-baby verses at work, because it was already on my schedule, the way it always seems to be. For daughters and sons and granddaughters and "the new parents." Some of them are pretty good. I can do "a little miracle" and "ten tiny fingers" and "welcome to the world" in my sleep. I've done them in my sleep. But I sit down to write one for her, for Deanna's actual baby, the one who holds on to my finger and won't let go and smells like nothing else in the world, and there's nothing.

I told Cheryl that. She asked why I thought that might be. I said, I don't know, writer's block? She waited, the way she does, until I said the real thing, which is: because every word I've got for babies has been used on strangers. All of them. I've sold them all.

She said, "Then maybe this one isn't a card."

Choir tonight was extra, for Lent. Darrell drove me home because my car's making the noise again. He didn't talk much, which was exactly right. When we got to my building he said, "You seem far away tonight," and I said, "I'm thinking about a baby," and he said, "That's a good thing to be far away about." Then he said goodnight. He's a very careful man.

Sunday, February 7, 1999
Welcome, Little One

My niece was born Wednesday morning at 4:12. Kyla. Seven pounds, two ounces, and a head of dark hair that sticks straight up like she's been startled. Deanna is tired and fine. Rodger is walking around like he invented babies.

I got to the hospital at six, and they let me hold her, and I sat in the vinyl chair by the window with her and the sun came up over the parking garage, and I didn't say anything for a really long time. Deanna said, "Well? You're the writer." And I opened my mouth and nothing came out, and Deanna laughed, and I cried, and the nurse came in and said, "Everybody OK in here?"

I bought a card on the way home. A blank one, with a watercolor duck on the front. I've been carrying it around for four days. It's still blank.

Wednesday, January 13, 1999
Make a Joyful Noise

I joined the choir.

Cheryl's idea, sort of. She asked what I used to do for fun, before I did everything for an audience, and the first thing I said was singing. I sang alto all through high school, and in the church choir as a teenager, right up until college. And then I stopped. So tonight I went back to my parents' church, the one I grew up in, the one where I was going to get married, and climbed up into the choir loft for Wednesday rehearsal, and the director, who has been there since I was twelve, said, "Well, look who's here," and handed me a folder like I'd never left.

I was so nervous I sang an entire page of the wrong part. Nobody said anything. The alto next to me, who is seventy-four, just put her finger on the right line in my folder and kept singing.

Also, a tenor stepped on my foot on the way out of the loft and apologized four times, very sincerely, and then held the door. His name is Darrell. I'm mentioning him because he's the only person who tripped over anything tonight besides me.

The best part was not having to find the words. Somebody else already found them. All I had to do was sing them, and stay in tune, and listen to everybody else.

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