My daughter is visiting for the weekend, and we browse the shops in my neighborhood. The place where she likes to get custard. The thrift store with the colorful glassware. The feminist gift shop that sells build-your-own charm necklaces.
Let’s make a necklace, my daughter says.
No, I think. It’s a reflex from an old self. The one who worries about money, the one who pooh-poohs silly trinkets. All week I’ve been on edge, crossing my fingers for friends in North Carolina who are cleaning up after a hurricane. Another hurricane that just barreled past an aunt who lives in Florida. And how did I end up so lucky, a beautiful fall day in Ohio, a daughter who wants to pal around with me and make a silly necklace?
Yes, I say, and we spend a ridiculous amount of time pawing through the various charms. Mostly this is me. I forgot to bring my reading glasses, and I can’t see what I’m pawing through. A dog’s face or is that a mouse? Some kind of plant? A feather?
My daughter laughs. It’s weed, Mom.
Oh. Ha. Okay. When it’s time to pay, the clerk says I’ve won a chance to roll the dice to win up to fifty percent off my purchase. She hands me a beachball-sized die. I roll it on the floor and it lands on a picture of a cat. The clerk cheers. A cat is the fifty percent off symbol. I am over-the-top excited about my win, posing for pictures, holding the dice, grinning next to my daughter, the two of us festooned in our matching half-price necklaces.
Later, we gorge ourselves on custard and binge-watch a trainwreck of a reality TV show. The stars on the show keep talking about how they feel, but for some reason they pronounce it “fill.” The word echoes in my head, the heartbreak of it, the absurdity. How they fill. How I do.
Why is it one person's turn for tragedy, another's turn for joy? And what a thin line separates the two. A senseless shift in the weather. A roll of a die.
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