Through the bugs on the windshield
MANHATTAN — I turned the fans in the living room to full blast to circulate the air and took a seat in the office, papers and books and notepads spilling all over.
It’s 96 today. At a certain point, it doesn’t matter the degree. Anything above 90 feels like you’re trapped inside an oven. A breeze only feels like the oven is cracked just a touch for a quick peak so see how dinner is coming along, before closing again.
Can confirm: We’re cooking just fine in here.
After a few minutes, the smell of paint floated out of the guest room and into the living room, and the whirling fans created a gulf stream that brought the aroma into the office.
Trapped in heat, surrounded by the sweet, unescapable smell of the paint, stacks of books awaiting to be read, family gathering elsewhere, friends another.
Welcome to grad school, buddy.
This is not — and will not — become a newsletter dedicated to the perils of school. I’m lucky to be in the program I am, and I’m enjoying 90 percent of it. New words and words of a past life have taken over. Words like “discussion board posts” and “research” and “homework” and “synthesize” and “bedtime.” I went from a profession that required phones to be within reach and notifications to be on loud, to needing to put all alerts on Do Not Disturb and placing limits on social media usage. We all move through life in different ways, and sometimes we take sharp right turns. It’s been about a month, but the sharp turn we took toppled over boxes in the car, and we’re just now placing the boxes upright again.
We’ve found places to eat. I no longer need Google Maps to get to the hardware store, grocery store or class. I know which exit is mine off of Lawrence, and I know now where to park. No tickets yet. (Emphasis on yet.) I know what the faces of my students look like, and what my professors expect of me and that the train will blow around 7:15 p.m. every night. I know where the trash needs to be placed now, and that my car will always be a landing spot for bird poop.
The routine has slowly set in, and the cloud of graduate school has formed. I feel guilty even now taking time to write this. I can almost hear the rumble of the Grad School Cloud, collecting more condensation and growing darker into a storm that’ll bring anxiety, panic and a late night.
Every time I sit down to write I hope I won’t have to point out the unknowingness of the day, but of course we’re all still trapped in this reality. Masks and distancing and nationwide anxiety continue, unfortunately. Which is why complaining about the heat or school — though familiar — are foolish. So, it’s the small things we continue to try and find to stay afloat.
As Betty Smith wrote in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, “People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”
I’ve thought about that quote a lot these past few weeks.
In this new routine, I’ve found myself on I-70 three times a week driving directly into the sunset. Granted, for about 30 minutes, the drive is profoundly annoying, the bright yellow sun shining directly into the front windshield. The Royals usually go down 2-0 or 3-1 in those first few innings and after another grounder into a double play I change the dial, and by then the sun has grown orange and then turned auburn and then turns into a deep clementine. The Flint Hills roll by, and the shadow of the cows in the pastures grow smaller, and the bugs on the windshield multiply and steal some of the beauty.
The drives are not ideal. But I end them with those sunsets. Which is why, while driving, happiness doesn’t feel like a faraway thing. It’s worth finding those small moments throughout a day.
The sun and the heat bring people outside. As we drove to the store today for more paint, we saw children playing in a splash pad. How can that not raise a mood?
The smell of paint smells of new. The room, the guest room, the one we painted, used to be brown. Brown like a melted candy bar.
After careful selection, the two coats of “white flour” brightened up the entire side of the house. The darkest room is now the lightest.
We’ll take just about any brightness we can get these days.