35 – The Cranky Docent

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged,

Martha Grayson takes her tea in the backyard each morning. It’s a distinctly British thing to do – to “take one’s tea.” She isn’t British though. Not even by a mere speck of a percentage. She knows this because she’s had her DNA tested. According to her blood, she is 72% Norwegian, 12% Belgian, 10% Swiss, and 2% First Nations/Native American. Chippewa, specifically. (This would not have been enough to get her a scholarship once upon a time. So, at the very least, she needn’t lament a lost opportunity.) The final 4% rather strangely includes minute percentages from a conglomeration of West African and Far East Asian countries. Who knew? Her blood. That’s who.

Martha Grayson is also .05% Neanderthal. This tickles her. Upon discovering her sliver of Neanderthal lineage, she envisioned a tiny caveman living in her heart. She pored through caveman names on the internet and now calls him Mog because “it’s a caveman name that signifies a wise and knowledgeable individual who possesses a deep understanding of the natural world.” Were he not tucked somewhere behind the left ventricle of Martha’s heart, she’s certain that Mog would be one to also take tea in the backyard. A civilized caveman with an appreciation for flowers and bird song, to be sure.

Martha Grayson retired five years ago from her job as a pediatric oncology nurse. It had been… difficult work. But it was work she’d been called to do for reasons that baffled, worried, or entirely escaped her friends but were painfully obvious to her. At any rate, upon retiring, she’d been looking forward to traveling the country in a Winnebago with her husband and best friend of 43 years, Gregory “Grant” Grayson. Aside from being the product of questionable parenting, Grant was an inveterate hermit. When he would begrudgingly join Martha for social events, he would put on an impressive show of congeniality then suddenly disappear like an octopus blending into the ground beneath it. Over the years, they referred to this jokingly as trapdooring. Grant’s sheer dedication to mastering the art of trapdooring was achieved a few weeks after Martha retired. He had a massive coronary while mowing the lawn and trapdoored his way right out of her life. She’d begged him for years to lay off the fast food. But the man could never turn away from the siren song of crinkly paper encasing steamy French fries glistening with grease. When Martha would lament Grant’s shortcomings to her friend Bill, he’d calmly remind her, “we’re all doing our best with what we’ve got.” She wishes now though that Grant’s best could have been a little better.

Martha Grayson takes a late morning nap and then prepares for her afternoon. She walks past the one room in the house that she still can’t bear to enter. Even now, twenty-five years later. She continues down the hall and is eventually greeted by Balthazar in the kitchen. When twenty-one years ago it was clear there would never be another child, she’d adopted the giant 79-year-old tortoise. She’d been in love ever since. (Grant had sometimes joked that she loved Balthazar more than him. It was not a statement she immediately refuted.) With an anticipatory glance from Balthazar, she opens the refrigerator and pulls open the produce drawer. It squeaks in protest, but she knows it’s not a legitimate gripe. She retrieves a head of lettuce from the drawer and kneels next to Balthazar, petting his head. A patina of calm glazes his shiny black bead eyes as he tilts his wrinkled head toward her. “Happy 100th, my best of friends,” she says as he gingerly takes the lettuce from her hand. “You don’t look a day over 75.” Balthazar blinks as he chews his lettuce and she appreciates his remarkable sense of humor. He shuffles slowly out of the kitchen. A decades-old injury to his back left foot gives him the demented gait of an inebriant. This endears him to her even more.

Martha Grayson spends five afternoons per week volunteering as a docent at the zoo. As she exits each day, she offers Balthazar a parting gift of melon or cut grapes, then places her hand over her heart to ensure that Mog is with her. She loves being a docent. It gets her out of the house, keeps her moving, and places her gently in a world where animals peacefully co-exist and children are healthy. Some would argue that she’s not the perfect person for the job though. There are certainly days when the embedded trauma rears its multiple heads like some modern-day Cerberus and she can’t quite conjure up a smile, let alone a greeting, for the visitors. Other days, she opts out of conversation with her fellow docents to instead linger alone near the playful primates who make her smile or the sure-footed ungulates who give her a sense of grounding. There are even occasions when she hides in the bathroom, feigning intestinal woes. Constipation, after all, is a long and solitary affair that needs no justification. As a result of this behavior, some of the other docents or zoo staff regard her as standoffish or cold. Others have come to call her the cranky docent. She’s well aware of this. Perhaps they’re joking. Maybe they mean it as an insult. But it’s a moniker to which she takes no offense. Or, well, very little, at least. Because at the end of the day, she knows she’s doing her best with what she’s got. Even if she still, after all this time, has to remind herself most days that it’s enough.

#34 – Delicious Music

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged,

Arriving home from school, she placed her backpack on the old wooden bench in the kitchen. It creaked and complained. She sighed in return. She set to replaying the day in her mind, as she often did. It must have been something I said, she thought. Though, as usual, she had no clue what it was.

She felt most of the time as though she viewed the world through the gauzy and gossamer walls of a cocoon. And that she was perpetually at that stage between caterpillar and butterfly. Long languid days in the chrysalis when enzymes dissolve the caterpillar into a soup-like substance while its tissues, limbs, organs, and imaginal discs strategize their move to their correct positions. Yes. She was butterfly sauce. 

What was it I said this time? She bit into an apple bursting with a sweetness that washed over her tongue like cerulean blue music. Were she to describe the experience out loud, that’s exactly what she’d say.

At the sound of her sister and brother in the other room playing and laughing, she felt that familiar surge of overwhelm – bitter in her mouth like unsweetened chocolate. So she sought solace in her bedroom closet just as a nautilus retreats to the first chamber of its geometrically perfect shell. It was a place where she was free to ponder, mull, wring her hands, and gaze through the small circular window on the eastern wall. How lovely it would be if the rest of my house were as perfect as the nautilus shell, she thought. 

From the closet and the space inside her head – that cozy attic corner where she truly resided – her words flowed into the air with seamless precision. They were white-hot percussion – clear and concise. But she suspected this is not what other people experienced. Those troublesome creatures who lived outside of her head seemed to witness something more akin to an illegible sign composed of buzzing, flickering, and fading neon letters; their narrow winding tubes filled only halfway with the illuminated gas.

“Screw them,” she said and moved to a deep nook at the back of the closet. There she had carved out a her-sized spot complete with a small lamp, a pad of paper, and a set of colored pencils. She leaned against her favorite polka-dotted dress and put pencil to paper. Her body felt at ease and she moved through the gateway to an alternate world. It was a world where colors had flavors, flowers had song, and she never EVER said anything wrong. 

#33 – An Inexperienced Homebody

Extraordinarily Brief Stories for the Attention Span-Challenged

It was their ritual. Every time they settled in a new place, Clara, her younger sister, and her parents would take a long walk to ‘get their bearings,’ as her father said. Clara had come to question the point of such an exercise. They more than likely would be here for only a year. If even. That’s the way it always was. In her ten years on the planet, Clara had never witnessed a full cycle of seasons in one place; had had no opportunity to welcome the return of the perennials that had bloomed the summer before in the yard or to watch for the birds that had migrated the previous autumn. Yet, here they were getting their bearings. Again. Even so, Clara loved this part of the move. It was safe to say it was her favorite – though she was normally not wont to choose favorites. Doing so often resulted in heartbreak.

The ritual was familiar. And being in the company of familiarity was a rarity for Clara. It made sense that the word ‘family’ came from ‘familiar’. Or was it the other way around? Whatever the case, in those first hours that they walked each new neighborhood they would fleetingly call home, she’d willfully ignored how some of the plants appeared to be from another planet; how the people spoke in a way that sounded strangely off to her ear; how the other children observed her as though she were some odd specimen to be viewed under glass. Noticing all of that would come later. And with it would come the prickly insecurity that increasingly populated every corner of her life. But when holding her father’s hand and laughing with her mother and sister during the ritual, the rest of the world fell away. 

This time as they wandered the long road leading into town though, something felt different. Clara glanced upon three grackles and a cardinal perched on a fence near a feeder. The sun was bright and it drew out a shocking iridescent blue on the grackles’ otherwise ink-black heads. The cardinal, by contrast, glowed red even in the shade. (Such a show off.) The recognition of the birds surprised her. In fact, it was the first time that none of the flora and fauna seemed alien. This was in startling contrast to when they’d moved to southern Florida when she was six or to Alaska when she was eight. These locales were particularly jarring. While she hoped to never again set foot in ‘God’s waiting room’ (as her father loved to call it), she’d adored Alaska. Particularly the First Nations people she’d come to know and even call friends. She loved the way they were of the land, the way they knew they belonged to something and to one another. Having no steady home and only a very tiny tribe to call her own, she envied them this. Approaching the end of their year there, Clara had begged her father to stay.

“Pleeeeeeease, dad? Can we please stay? I finally have friends and I love it here.”

“Ah, my Clara,” her father had laughed and patted her on the head. “Who’d have guessed I’d have a homebody for a daughter.”

She wasn’t sure what her father had meant by that. What was a homebody? “Well, can I stay at least? And you and mom and Remy can go to Tennessee? Maybe send for me later?”

“You know we can’t do that,” he smiled and leaned down. “Look, I understand it can be hard moving around. But you have to trust me. It will make you a more well-rounded person.” 

But Clara didn’t want to be round. Nor did she wish to relocate to Tennessee. Alas, the choice was not hers. On her last day in Alaska, she cried. Her best friend Tonngaviak (“Tonnie”) and every member of her family gave her a hug. Tonnie told Clara that when she felt alone, all she needed to do was to look up at the sky and she’d always be right there. Given that her name translated to butterfly, Clara at least half-believed her.

Walking through their new neighborhood in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Alaska now felt so very far away. But she also realized for the first time that they were only a few hours from where they’d lived in Northeastern Ohio just three years before. Ah, she thought. No wonder. This would account for her familiarity with the birds and many of the plants, trees, and flowers. Bucking her usual convention, she decided to also listen to the voices of the native Kalamazooians (or whatever they called themselves) to determine if she could parse out any unusual drawl. There was none. While this should have brought relief, it instead caused Clara to worry that she’d retained a Tennessee drawl from the previous year. That would be more than enough to secure her candidacy for ‘most bullied’ in school – a role she’d inadvertently won a few times and had no intention of revisiting. Thus, reverting to her usual ‘ritual’ behavior, she kept her head down to avoid eye contact with potential kids they may encounter. She resolved right then and there to eliminate any hint of that drawl before she started school the following week. 

Ech. The thought of another new school made her stomach flip. While her perky and ebullient little sister took each move in stride, Clara was starting to understand that her wiring was different. Faulty, most likely. How else to explain it? The rest of her family – her minuscule tribe – danced gracefully while she performed a series of stumbling missteps. In frustration, she let go of her father’s hand and lagged back a few feet. The sun continued to blaze and she stopped to shed her jacket and toss it to the ground. Staring up at the sky, she longed to have Tonnie come up from behind her and give her a hug. But that wasn’t going to happen. And looking up at the sky, she was betrayed. She felt no connection with Tonnie. Instead, she felt sad and alone. She wanted to go home, but didn’t know where that was.

“Come on, Clara,” her mother called to her from ahead in a sweet and reassuring voice.  “We’ve still got a ways to go.”

“Of course we do,” Clara whispered to herself and shook her head, discouraged. “I’m coming,” she responded with a world-weary sigh, scooping up her jacket and moving forward. The noticed the leaves of a giant oak and a smaller red maple flutter as she passed. Behind her she heard the battle cry of a blue jay and the raspy caw of a crow. What she didn’t see flitting along behind her, however, was a majestic Green Marble butterfly – an insect native only to Siberia… and Alaska.