Yellow Light

In some ways, this weekend was wonderful. I got to eat Chinese food, take Sunny to the beach, see my nephew compete in a championship Little League farm league and drive around my state. Most of all, I got to see Adam’s grandfather hold our new nephew, which was just about the most moving thing I’ve ever seen, ever, in the history of things on this earth. And I can’t believe I said ‘moving,’ but it was, so you shut up. He’s 87 and perfect.

I also spent at least 11 hours wasting precious brain cells wondering how why a dog was wearing a raincoat throughout the weekend. A dog is not meant to wear a rain slicker, and it is most certainly not at home in the Natick Mall food court next to the Sbarro. But…alas. I can’t go there and really, I could, to a dangerous degree.

But a dog also is not meant to wear a hat with sunglasses on top of its head and a tennis skirt, either, but that’s all I’m saying and I promised myself I wouldn’t go there.

But I want to.

So bad.

But anyway.

Home was a weird thing to see. I expected to feel pangs of nostalgia when I saw fishermen at the pier loading in their catch and hauling out the lobster traps for another trip out to sea, and I did. It was raining softly, and the man in the yellow rain jacket might as well have been the Morton’s fisherman, and for all I know, he was. It was so beautiful out there – so green, lush and authentic in that New England way that only exists in postcards and the North Shore.

I was also stressed, which terrified me. I went to bed with chest pains every night. On the plane heading down there, I saw a man with a pile of papers that were clearly analyst reports and financial tables and I was pretty sure I was going to have a panic attack at the sight of him, because I’ve BEEN HIM. This may or may not have been exacerbated by the fact that we were mid-climb and he stood up and started reaching into the overhead bin and pulled out an actual, full-size Swingline stapler and began sorting through the paperwork, stapler in hand before we could use electronic devices and let me tell you, NO ONE BREATHES before we can use electronic devices, much less STAPLES ANALYST REPORTS. THERE IS NO STAPLING DURING THE INITIAL CLIMB. And how did he get a Swingline on that plane? You could kill someone with a Swingline! The flight attendant, who introduced herself on the PA system as “Mrs. Nichols,” had to come over and restrain the man, who was not pleased that his frenzied stapling was interrupted. And again: Mrs. Nichols? Why not Jane? Annabeth? MRS. NICHOLS.

I never expected that I’d end up feeling like I couldn’t breathe – like I’d be forced to go back to work at that awful place and make a living shilling technology products and ingratiating myself to mouthbreathing freaks in polyester turtlenecks for coverage in IT weekly publications. Talking to investors and discussing the stock market like I have the slightest clue what I’m talking about (I don’t, and I can’t add 2 + 2, so PLEASE do not ask me how the market works. Despite an embarrassing number of years in financial communications and corporate governance, I have only a rudimentary understanding of SarBox and why stocks go up and down, and I’m not sure I could explain the difference between buy-side and sell-side analysts without confusing the hell out of both of us. There was a day when I could, rather vividly, but today is not that day.)

I could only picture these horrible scenarios, plus the hundreds of hours giving proverbial blowjobs to executives in exchange for a reprieve on that last PowerPoint presentation, and getting shit on by low-level editors at the New York Times because they have nothing better to do, and no one else to poop on but me. Yes, all this was mine, for a nice salary and a hearty helping of my soul.

I couldn’t see a world beyond those confines in Massachusetts. I couldn’t take myself out of the mold I was in the last time I lived there, and I couldn’t see myself living there any other way. I said this before, and I thought I was over it, but the chest pains sealed it: I’m not. I can’t see my life the way it is now anywhere else. I can’t see how I could go back and be a low-level employee the way I am here, when I was so much more there. I can’t see myself being good enough to be a writer at a tiny publication by day and pursue a writing career by night, in additon to being a real person the way I do here. It was easier here, where there was no paradigm for living – no expectation as to how I would be, who I would be, or what I would become. No expectations. I like that.

I guess, um, I like it here more than I thought. But I also couldn’t imagine a life here, either – away from family and friends, an expensive flight for even the simplest of family events. Sigh. Thank God we have a year to figure it out.

Maudlin. Sorry. Just picture a Shih-Tzu in the rain slicker and a tennis skirt. Because it happened.

*Remy Zero

11 comments June 27th, 2006