Ketchup

I backed my car into the garage door last week. I was on my way to view pussywillows. Three days ago the Juncos returned. Yesterday I heard a Winter Wren in the midst of a blizzard. Thirteen inches, 40-mph winds, in April. Easter eggs and dog shit will be easier to spot against all this white.

The road I run is festooned with pussywillows for a scant few weeks in early Spring. Each year it occurs to me I should start a cottage industry selling small bunches of the things, which retail for $6.99 at the local florist. This could keep me in the style to which I'm accustomed, for at least a month. I picture a small ribbon-entwined kiosk on the walk in front of my house, the sun smiling down, Juncos and Wrens warbling in the background...all this surrounded by three-foot snowdrifts. (Note to self: Run heater cord from house out to kiosk.)

The style to which I'm accustomed is this: unemployment. Confession time. I'm a deadbeat, a non-contributor, a wastrel. I'm a receptacle for the dismissal and disgust of my employed friends. Not that I have any, employed or otherwise. I've been chronically-unemployed for several years. I can't believe I just wrote that. But it's true. I've worked out in the world in dribs and drabs. Mostly, I've worked at home.

Oh-Oh. The Stay-At-Home controversy.

I'd rather argue Politics or Religion any day. I never pictured myself in this place. I've been a working fool for most of my adult life. Now it's come to this. The thing is, I'm not Stay-At-Home by choice, but by accident. The accident of parenthood. Which is a story in itself. And not one I'm inclined to go into just now.

One day I woke up and found myself unemployed, and stayed that way. This was a few years ago, when my daughter was younger. Now that she's older...and no, she's not twenty-seven!...I wake up and get her to school and come back home and find myself unemployed. I might be working my ass off (man, I wish that were true), but I don't have much to show for it by way of the American definition of success, other than an above average kid (thank you, Garrison), an orderly house, good leg muscles and a dog who doesn't spend all day in a cage. That last part pretty much describes what it's like to work for the U.S. Postal Service, one of my former employers.

It's not that I wish to remain unemployed. It's that the longer I go without a JOB (as in "A place to work" as opposed to "That poor schmuck in the bible with all the trials"), the more comfortable, the more familiar joblessness becomes. A person can get used to just about anything. With the exception of Muzak and George W. Bush.

I believe there are many women, maybe even some men, who can relate to this feeling of lassitude in the face of events beyond one's control. This feeling of...circumstantial ennui. Hey, I like that. Circumstantial Ennui. I envision T-shirts airbrushed with these words, for sale alongside the pussywillows. Somehow they go together. In my previous life, in The Old Neighborhood down in The City, I used to see a car with a vanity license plate that read ENNUI. The guy I was going out with at the time thought it was Chinese; later that same day, I broke up with him.

I blame CE for my garage door mishap. If I'd been paying attention to the minutiae of the present moment instead of wallowing in circuitous indecisiveness, I'd have remembered: 1. Close door of vehicle, 2. Insert ignition key, 3. Engage garage door opener, 4. Pull gearshift into Reverse, 5. Apply pressure to gas pedal. Preoccupied as I was, I neglected to perform Step 3. A minor offense, a slight blip on the Road of Life, but still. It gave me pause. In spite of all that's going on in my life...all that's not going on...I've somehow managed to infiltrate my consciousness with random thoughts of pussywillows. Garage doors and W-4s be damned. Is this a good thing?

Awhile back, I was having trouble coming up with a title for one of these posts. This was unusual, as titles usually knock me upside the head with their obviousness. I happened to mention my dilemma to my daughter, who didn't miss a beat.

"Ketchup," she said, "call it Ketchup."

"Why Ketchup?" I said, and she said,

"Because, you know, that's what it is. It's hard to explain." Then she said, "When are you gonna let me read your blog?"

"When tomatoes fly!" is what I was thinking. What I said was, "Speaking of cyberspace, what say we play a couple games of Pizza Party Pickup before dinner."

Which we did. Which my daughter, of course, won.