Sitting up, I reach down into my slick, green flight bag and pick up my English to Arabic dictionary. Thumbing through the well-worn pages, I search for the words I will need today. Hospital. Doctor. Medicine.
We dug into the ground, uprooting the shrubs and tossing them aside. We dug out stones and roots, de-housed spiders the size of plump ravioli and worms like fleshy shoelaces. Three feet into the ground we found an arrowhead…
I slouched at the end of the exam table in the crepe-paper robe, and to avoid crying uncontrollably, I spoke ill of my sister-in-law: “She’s an 18-year old dropout and just had a baby.”
He was six feet tall, unyielding yet benevolent (plush stuffed with foam pellets), the clean eternal green of AstroTurf, a gorgeous anomaly at a depressing little tag sale
He should have been brushing dirt from his mouth or cobwebs from his eyes that afternoon, not sipping coffee in a white T-shirt and characteristic jeans.
Some went back to bartending. Some went to the pawnshop to hawk whatever knee-jerk purchases were intended to signify status. I went back to the hotel to work as a doorman and regain my benefits.
The song played in a continuous loop, providing not only the music for all three of us, but also a swirling psychedelic picture on the computer screen for Scott and Mike to watch until I had dinner on the table.
The narrative of my own musical lineage … still grows in intricate, intertwining branches and swelling crescendos in bold, arpeggiated chords toward what I hope will someday be a magnificent finale.