Worker

I didn't want to go to work today. I wanted to stay home and gaze at the kids, so grown and competent, making breakfast, making plans for the day, not needing me to organize or facilitate anything, a glorious crew of four, my son and daughter, my son's girlfriend who's in town for the week, and his best friend, emerging one by one, freshly dressed to meet the day, so brilliant with youth and possibility it almost hurt to see it, except it didn't, it just made me want to sit and marvel and stay where everything was shiny and cheerful and for the moment carefree. My daughter, who sat her last final yesterday and has no school today while the teachers grade exams, will finally get to join the adventure, to roam the city with the college kids. They're going to walk the High Line, follow the path in an elevated park created along an old railway line, where the plants are allowed to be wild and exuberant, much as they are. A new section of the park opens up today. They will be there to inaugurate it and sit on the grass and who knows what else.

A billboard reflection in the glass wall of the High Line

Now I'm sitting in this meeting, wishing instead to be out in the world, weary at what lies before me this day, the stories that aren't working, the rewrites being asked for on the day before shipping, the need to reconcile the minds of the two, they don't agree, I don't agree, the tiredness in my center, in my heart place, a heaviness, a feeling of being hopelessly trapped, staccato breath pushing its way up and out as I feign calm capability, no problem, it can be done, it will be done, I am a worker among workers, even if I don't agree with you, I will make it so. Give me this day a fight that matters. The rest is process.

As for reasons, there is this. When I saw it just now, I remembered, this is why.