Perforation Problems

I've never been on a true road trip, not the kind where you're on the road for days traveling long distances, or where you stop in little towns to see giant balls of yarn or visit whaling museums. Not the kind where you have adventures and drive with the windows down and the radio blaring. Road trips to me are about the trip itself, not wherever you're going—you're taking your time, enjoying the sights, exploring the route. I have gone on long car trips, though. Those are different. They're about the destination, and the trip itself is something annoying you have to get through to get wherever you're going.  Georgia to Indiana, Indiana to Georgia. Indiana to New York, New York to Indiana. These are the routes I've ridden over and over. As a kid I built myself a comfort station in the back seat of our family van, my dog Max on the floor, my pillow against the window, snacks in my bag, my feet up against the pile of luggage surrounding me like a cocoon. My...

Growing up, my brothers and I lived in constant trepidation over whether or not our mom was going to flip out about the house being messy. You'd think that would cause us to take some preventative measures, like maybe picking up our shit. Nah. We just kept our eyes open and ears tuned to signs that Mom was about to erupt, and then we'd disappear. I know now that a lot of my mom's anxiety over the house being clean came from her own mother. Grandma Pam cared about appearances, about presentation. Every time my mother left the house as a kid, Grandma told her to "act like a lady." She had the perfect shoes to go with every outfit, with a handbag to match and the appropriate length coat. And the Grandma I knew was always on the move, bustling around the house straightening and organizing and wrapping presents with perfect corners. While we played cards or read on the lounge chairs at the lake she'd be weeding or doing dishes or straightening the placemats we...

Neither Michael nor I are sports people. My mom loves any and every sport and doesn't understand how anyone can not want to spend an afternoon at the ballpark. I was a constant disappointment to her as a kid, whether I was bringing my book with me to read in the stands at Wrigley Field or expressing zero interest in driving 3 hours to go to an IU basketball game. Actually, forget the "as a kid" part. It's still a disappointment to her. When my dad asked me a few weeks ago if I was going to watch the Super Bowl—even "just for the commercials"—I laughed at him. At least I've stopped pretending. For awhile in college and my early work years I thought sports were one of the things I had to feign interest in to appear normal and healthy, like enjoying happy hours, and parties, and social interaction in general. I wish I could go back to my younger self and tell her there's an entire population of introverts out there, and you don't have to beat the ...

I walk into Calvin Fletcher's on a Friday afternoon, pulling off my gloves and blinking as my eyes adjust to the dim light. It's sunny outside today but still cold—a winter fakeout. This winter will never end. I walk inside a few steps and turn in a circle, scoping out the seating. All our preferred spots are taken—in fact, there aren't any empty tables at all. I stand there dumbly for a moment, uncertain where to go and aware that people are looking at me. I head for the sitting area at the back of the room. There's a man sitting in one of the chairs, but the couch is free—and maybe by the time Sarah gets here something will open up, anyway. As I walk over, the man is staring at me in a way that sets off warning bells—as if he's been waiting for me, as if he knows I'm coming that direction and is excited about it. It's too late to change my path—I've already committed. I sit down, take off my coat, and pull out my computer, hoping to inspire a sense...

When we were kids, my mom worked for a small business owned by a couple that went to our church. American Leak Detection—they found leaks in swimming pools. In high school the couple gave me my first job, helping them with random grunt work a day or two a week for $5.15 an hour. Lois, the squat, curly-haired wife (the epitome of a grandma) would have m&ms and goldfish for me to snack on when I got there. I decimated them on the reg, but man, I did an excellent job of sorting the brochures in their supply closet. I'm sure I was a huge asset to them.  But back before I was old enough to work, American Leak Detection gave my mom her first job after having kids. And in the summers, when she was off being their accountant three days a week, the three of us were left gloriously alone. Ah, summer days of sleeping in and mindlessly watching episode after episode of Bobby's World and Animaniacs, of laying on the couch reading the romance novels I swiped from my mom's library ...

I don't think I used to get depressed in the winter, but maybe I just wasn't very cognizant of it. I don't remember thinking, "wow, winter is really fucking depressing" until I was in my late twenties, working in a cubicle in an office. Maybe that was part of it, too. Life looks different from within mauve cubicle walls. One year, one of my friends gave me an extra sun lamp he had, and I put it in the corner on my desk so the white glow would hit me as I stared at the computer. I don't remember it working. When I was a teacher, I don't remember thinking of winter as particularly bad—but in those days January meant second semester, which meant it was that much closer to summer vacation. And it was romanticism and modernism time in American Lit—Thoreau and Whitman and Hemingway and Faulkner. My favorites. Also, when I was teaching, that "I can't wait until summer when I don't have to work" feeling was with me all year round, so what dif...

There’s a room upstairs in my grandparents’ house that’s full of boxes and miscellaneous junk—blankets, pillows, unused furniture. My grandma used it as her storage area, and before her funeral we used it as a place to shove things from downstairs so there’d be more room for people to visit after the service. Nobody’s been up there in a year. This weekend my mom and I spent the night at Grandpa’s. We picked him up on our way to Wabash for First Friday, where we went shopping to spend the gift cards we still hadn’t used from last Christmas. Grandpa stood there quietly looking at things while we shopped, helped Mom get a purse down, said he liked the sweater I was trying on. I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to get irritated, but instead he reminded me of a docile puppy—agreeable, patient. After we walked over to a restaurant for dinner. They were understaffed and slow—it took an hour longer than it should have, but again, no more than mild complaints...