Grounding by Default

I tell you, the Time Capsule from Hell still packs a wallop.

What? Oh, pardon me: my storage unit, #96 at the northside Hinds & Hinds. I’m trying to sell a solid cherry hutch and had driven there to meet a would-be buyer 10:15 a.m. Upon arrival I pulled the mover’s quilt off the hutch and waited, trying not to stare too long at nearby boxes with Kathy’s writing on them. By 10:25 my buyer still hadn’t shown up, and I’d finished the coffee I’d brought with me, so I took up position outside under a large Siberian elm so I could look across the field and see if anyone was driving in. That wasn’t what was on my mind, of course.

It was always a shock to revisit #96, no matter how together I was before I raised the sliding metal door. Whenever the flotsam of our move out here in ’99 came into view, I needed counseling, strong drugs, or better yet, a good long hug from the woman who wasn’t there. This time I took matters into my own hands.

With no one else in sight, the long graveled drives between the rows of connected storage units — usually a parking lot of the damned — were strangely soothing in their quiet, dusty emptiness. I looked up at the clear blue sky, faced each of the four directions in turn, and said my morning prayers. I make them up spontaneously every day. This time I gave thanks for being here, for having life, and asked what I could do to help the healing from a thousand miles away, and also how to fill the hole I felt inside my heart. I stood there in the morning sun, waiting for someone I didn’t know to come and buy a hutch we’d bought together that I really didn’t want to sell at all, missing her so much I felt I’d fall to pieces on the spot. I asked again and again what I should do, quite literally asked, and then I heard or saw: be yourself. That was it, no more, just be yourself.

By now the buyer was almost 30 minutes late. I decided that the emotions aroused by going to the storage unit had prevented him from showing, and I was glad he’d stood me up, in fact. Sell the hutch? Okay, I tried, and not for the first time. There’d been another call the other day, a woman who had left a phone number with only six digits. More immaterial assistance? I covered up the hutch, lowered the metal door once more, and thought: the sadness is a gift. No narcolepsy here, no thought of what new toys to buy to keep me dragging through the week — and no need to sacrifice a goat to read the entrails when my own are baking in the sun.

My wife and I have hit the jackpot, after all. To give up everything and still be this connected doesn’t happen every day. We’ve answered questions most don’t even ask, though God knows neither had in mind to wonder in the first place — that’s where the gift, the trick, the great damn Holy Deception comes in.

Make my bed, clean my bowl, and see with open eyes. Just be myself and let it roll, and live for size six bare feet on the ranch-house kitchen floor.