ADMIT IT
A man in a mask and wearing a fat tank on his back is bent to the door of the parking garage.He is spraying andgives a wave, crosses the street, tries to open the door to the hotel, which is locked and closed, darkened for good:Okay, now what? He turns and walks back toward the parking garage. The man with the tank doesn’t look up,he’s all about the door handle now, rubbing it again and again. The bald man is past waving anyway.He’s not happy. He looks down and away. Admit it, it’s always been just a little too hardto live. Here comes the doctor who works in the clinic downstairs. She wears a laminated name tagand carries a big bag. Maybe it has masks in it, maybe oxygen tanks. She limps as she walks. The bag is too heavyand she is in too much of a rush. It’s nearly 8 a.m. I bet her first patient comes in at 8. I bet he’ll havecomplaints, but try to put a good face on it all. There was a saint once, tenth century, who suggestedwe do nothing but look into our own hearts and say what we see there. I see fear, hope, despair, and need.Sometimes I’m older than anyone in the world and one foot is out the door, sometimes I’m a baby six months oldand my mother is swinging me back and forth like a small sack of potatoes and I am laughing so hard I can hardly bear having been born.
