Straight No Chaser

Temporary Insanity

sorry. i really do know better than to write a journal entry about a computer game.

chad and i went to a graduation cookout at wheaton regional park today. it was hot as blazes, finally, which was nice for about the first two minutes. i'm pretty sure we were not invited to the cookout, which we figured out within seconds of arriving, so we politely excused ourselves to the nature trail.

it's the same park where we used to take all our school and aftercare field trips. i was pointing out trees and pools like crazy, what i thought were meaningful landmarks, trying to make chad remember how, at eleven and eight, we went out there with kelli and kevin to go fishing, once. he didn't remember. kelli and i were in some major fight about something that seemed like life-or-death at the time, probably something like whether we were going to keep it from this third girl that we were best friends, suddenly, without her. except for the actual topic of that conversation, i remember everything vividly: both our outfits, the way i cringed every time she crunched another buttercup with her shoe, my periodic freakouts about whether the way she kept tugging at the crotch of her jeans meant she'd gotten her period, before me.

i tried for about twenty minutes to make chad remember that day, because it was the one day i actually got kelli to admit she liked me better than the other girl, and i wanted to confirm that it had actually happen, but he didn't have a clue what i was talking about. shocking.

half an hour into our walk i was starting to itch, and getting worried about the wind blowing poison ivy resin onto my clothes, but then chad pointed out the goslings, which kept me distracted enough to forget about potential rashes till later. i don't really like geese much, i find them obnoxious, but i love babies, baby animals too, and these goslings were delicious--downy gray-yellow with tiny cartoon wings, and the biggest one (who still wasn't bigger than a beanie baby, probably) kept rising up on the toes of one foot, stretching the other one back behind his little nub-tail...

i stood and watched them for like an hour, taking phone pictures and thinking poetic things about their innocence and simplicity. every so often i took a step closer and got hissed at, by one of the parents. whatever, i wasn't a threat, which i guess they figured out, because they let me get within inches, and just as the stretchy one was about to crap on my flip-flop, i was suddenly very happy. it's a nice park, and it houses personal memories that extend back to before all this nonsense with guys and love and college, and god these goslings were adorable, it felt impossible to watch the little furballs and think about anything else--

so then marcus called. i have no idea how his call came through; we were, by this point, so deep into the forest, and onto this swampy lake, that even local numbers weren't working for me. his did, though. "hey!" he said. "what are you doing?"

"looking at some geese," i said, all clipped and nasty, still hurt by how completely he blew me off yesterday. "babies, in this pond, at the park."

"i wish i were there," he said quietly. and suddenly, i did too. "and i'm sorry about yesterday. let me tell you what happened with my phone..."

workshops all day, no access to previously procured charger, yada yada yada. he was talking and i was walking back up to the playground, sweaty and grimy and already afraid of smelling like geese for the rest of the weekend. i walked back by the kelli tree, stopped to look at some honeybees and this post-mounted display about fox kits in the forest. thinking, the whole time, i really do wish he were here, and ceasing to be mad, even as i was listening to his whole ridiculous thing about how he couldn't call, whatever.

"what are you thinking about?" he asked at the end, when i didn't reply.

"goslings," i said.

there are too many fuzzy, gold and green things in the world to stay mad at somebody you love for long. i guess.

he's coming tomorrow.