I didn’t eat a big lunch on Monday and I ended up getting home a little later than usual, and my route home took me through a nearby neighborhood, but not a nearby neighborhood I go through often. It was gray, and the air was soft, and there were a few cats out near the railroad tracks. I saw the little girl on the scooter a block and a half before I got to her. I slowed down (and I was already rolling slowly along). Her mom held her back anyway, and we smiled at each other out the window. And onto Spotify came “Strawberries.”
I listened to a lot of Caamp last spring, when everything was shutting down. I was grinding then, doing grunt work because the hours were plentiful and the certainties were few. Making hay. But I’d be gassed late at night, and my eyes would be heavy, and I’d pull away from my fiancée’s building and turn on some music, often Caamp, such that as I turned from East 6th onto the Frontage Road, I’d be listening to some track from By and By while this one star or planet or satellite twinkled above the skyline, and forgive me if I’ve written this before but it looked like it was waving goodbye.
When I got home Monday night, my wife was tired. Her day had ended badly. And I was tired, and our puppy wasn’t, and we didn’t know what to do but we gave the dog a bone and we sat on the couch for four minutes, and I turned on “Strawberries” again and I gave her a hug. The music played.
