Touch the Grass

The news is a firehose, and I was drowning in it. I tried to turn it off, but it kept gushing at me. I paced around the house like the dog. I was thinking about how I’d just watched a video of an ICE officer kicking a little dog. The kick broke the dog’s ribs. How do I go back in time and not watch this video? I promise I wasn’t searching for it. IT PLAYED AT ME. It made me want to crawl out of my own skin. It made me hate the world. 

There’s a thing I read, online, that says when you feel like you’re too much online, you should go outside and touch the grass. But I couldn’t go outside and touch the grass because there’s a foot of snow piled on top of it. 

More snow came on Friday. My husband had taken the day off from work, and he drove me in to the library. A side note about the library: it is my happy place. First, there is the daily, meditative checking-in of books, the gentle shushing of the shelving and straightening. Also, I love my co-workers. It was my turn to bring the donuts, and we ate the donuts and told funny stories about the things patrons leave inside books. 

Macaroni noodles, for example. Or the time someone returned a book with one thousand post-it notes sticking out of it. And then, we opened the doors, and the kids toddled in. It was a slow day because of the icy roads, but I got to see some of my favorites. The little girl who wears the sparkly boots. The little boy and his mom who do the scavenger hunt together, and when I say, Do you want a clue? They say, No, we’re doing it clean. 

Clean?

The mom tells me it’s how she does the New York Times Spelling Bee. No clues until you get to the Genius level. She says she and her friends call it “doing it clean.” 

I don't know why but I love this. I watched the mom and her son wander past one of the pictures they were trying to find. (Shhh! It’s on the ceiling!) They walked under it several times before the little boy looked up and pointed. I gave them both a sticker. By the time my husband picked me up, I was feeling much better. Let’s go on a date, he said. 

The date started in a strip mall for lunch, a new restaurant he’d read about and wanted to try. I opened the menu and everything was unfamiliar, but unfamiliar in a good way. Cheesy yuca fries? Sure. Arepas, why not? What’s an arepa? A type of bread, the waitress explained. Like a sandwich. I ordered one layered with a slab of cheese and hunks of steak. And oh my god, the yuca fries. They tasted like potato fries, but even better, when you dipped them in the sour-creamy, cheese-chunk sauce that came with the dish.  

How had we never eaten at this amazing place before? The date could’ve ended there, but we kept going. Browsed a used bookshop, poked around a thrift store, headed over to the big international market so my husband could buy the chili sauce he likes. 

The store wasn’t hopping how it usually is. ICE is trolling around Columbus, and the international markets are a target. I can so easily slip back into hating the world. 

But I won’t this time. 

This time I roam with my husband through the aisles in the international market, marveling at all the food we haven’t tried yet, the mound of yucas piled in a bin. We buy one to cook at home. 

It really does help, you know, to touch something real. 

In place of grass, try yucas or bread, books and stickers.