Sunday, January 9, 2022

In the moment

Ten minutes before the library closes, I take a call. What time do you close tonight? The caller asks me. 

Five o’clock. 

A pause. Oh, she says. Do you think I can make it if I leave now?  

I muffle a laugh. Lady, I think to myself. I have no idea where the hell you are. Honestly, I have no idea where I am most of the time. Here, of course, but not always. Not really. I’m working on this! It’s one of my New Year’s Resolutions. 

Be in the moment.  

Over the years I’ve resolved to work on variations of this same theme. Be present. Be IN the present. It's a tough one for me. I tend to drift off. Daydream. Sometimes disappear entirely. I used to think it was a funny quirk of my personality. But it’s not actually all that funny. It’s an adaptive mechanism, a response to trauma, something that once served me well, for safety purposes, when I needed to disappear. Now, though, I’d like to stay.

Stop forever rummaging around in the past. Stop always worrying over the future. Hold the moment I’m inhabiting and just, I don’t know, settle into it. Is that a thing? I tell the caller the library’s hours of operation and invite her to visit us in the morning. Ten minutes later, my co-workers and I are shutting down and heading out to our cars. 

Someone’s been inside my car. The seat is pushed back all the way and… I have a full tank of gas? I remember that my husband told me he’d come by during my shift and take the car to wash it. If there is a more romantic gesture than this, I can’t think of one right now. Home, and he’s already picked up dinner. After we eat, we watch our new favorite show, Emily in Paris. 

This is such a dumb show, and yet, my husband and I have binge-watched the entire first season in the past three days. The premise is an American girl, who doesn’t speak French, goes to work in Paris for a year. She’s a complete ding dong, but she’s adorable and her clothes are very fashionable and all of the French people she works with are varying degrees of crappy to her, but slowly she wins them all over by being so cluelessly joyful and charming and gushing over everything French. 

Maybe it’s all the bright colors and the lovely scenery of Paris and the sitting out at cafes and everyone drinking wine and/or eating French pastries. Watching the show makes me want to travel again and eat croissants and learn how to speak another language. 

Oh my God, I turn to my husband, Couldn’t you just so go for a croissant right now? 

A pause. How about a Triscuit? he says. 

That’ll do. We eat Triscuits and watch another episode of Emily in Paris. I speak to the dog for the rest of the night with a French accent and she looks at me like I’m a complete ding dong. 

This being in the present moment thing… I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. 

The dog also enjoys watching Emily in Paris




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