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When to stop?

I only met one of my grandpas. He was the most determined person I ever knew.

He would fix roofs under the oppressive Georgia sun. He would make a garden sprout in the harshest soil. He would help neighbors with their projects. And if you ever needed to borrow a ladder or a tool he’d drop everything he was doing and bring it right over to you.

Keeping going is the dominant gene in our family. No one knows how to stop even when our bodies are worn and sick and tell us to.

For a couple of days this week, I allowed myself not to be like him.

This way out

There’s an escalator at a Metro stop here in the city center. It’s not calibrated like the others. It’s stubborn that way, and has been for years.

If you lean against the handrail, your upper half will advance out in front of you. It’s easy to lose your balance and almost fall.

The escalator stretches to the center of the earth and back. So the ride gives me plenty of time to ponder. Is war coming closer, will robots take my job? Did I remember to pack my lunch?

The way out appears.

Everyone is infected

It took me a while to accept that numbers could be words. At least that’s what the gatekeeper of trending words proclaimed last year.

“As long as it stays on the other side of the pond we’re fine,” I convinced myself. And so began my rigorous campaign of checking everyone here for infections.

It started to spread as fast as the pandemic. First it fell out of the mouth of a teenage girl in the store. Then a colleague. My sons.

I looked out my window. Etched into the snow below were those numbers, one right after the other.

Sorry for helping you

We stood in line like food aid recipients. It had been two-and-a-half days since we last congregated here.

Shoppers, now anxious to prepare for the new year, cut me off. I knew that if I could just make it to self-checkout I was almost home.

Store employees stocked already full shelves. Perhaps their frantic movements were a result of complaints. And each of them received news of these complaints as the assistant manager broadcast her disgust through her headset.

Several boxes of Earl Grey fell at my feet. The assistant manager’s hands were full. Automatically I picked them up and handed them over. She snatched them back.

Simply the best

My mood was pulling me down. When that happens there’s always one person that can bring me back up. I queued up her best hits and plugged in there on the platform.

She started singing to me how I’m “simply the best” and “better than all the rest.”

My head bobbed up and down and that’s when I spotted him. Hunched over, clinging to walking sticks, he too was plugged in.

Tina danced on his screen.

The man in the wheelchair

He was in a wheelchair and had no legs. Three police officers interrogated him there on the sidewalk in the freezing cold.

In the evening I was exhausted and just wanted to be snug at home. And there it was: a car straddling that same sidewalk—a wall on one side, oncoming traffic and icy slush on the other.

Now I was angry. I mouthed words through the window at the vehicle’s only occupant. She stole my soul with her silent stare.

Didn’t she understand about the man in the wheelchair?

It's a waste of breath

My former best friend and I had a Friday ritual: the gym followed by lunch at a café across the street where Einstein used to dine. In between bites of club sandwich slathered in mayonnaise, we would talk. We knew each other better than our own selves.

One of us would go down a rabbit hole. Or both of us would go down a rabbit hole. Then that phrase “škoda mluvit” would stop us. A waste of breath.

The doom and gloom we had invited to sit with us at the table would get up and leave.

The odd number

It was the first Christmas after Santa. My sister and I were on a mission to identify our gifts.

They locked themselves in the bedroom, my Mom and her sister co-conspirator. The crack under the door wasn’t big enough for us to see in, but big enough to let sounds out. Wrapping paper was meticulously folded and fingers were accidentally taped. Laughter teased from the other side.

On Christmas we had to eat a full breakfast, followed by Mom’s delay tactics like cleaning up. All along the gifts had been numbered.

I was the odd number.

Believers

You would have thought they had just met the devil. The tourists’ faces curled up in disgust.

It was on full display in the atrium of the shopping mall—the one that half-sits over Jewish graves hundreds of years old.

Christmas trees of all shapes and sizes slowly rose up and down suspended by a cable. Except these were no ordinary Christmas trees: they were upside down Christmas trees. Like those before Martin Luther uprighted them.

Believers stared in disbelief.

Who needs this seat?

I usually don’t sit down in the tram. There’s always a mom with a pram or grandpa who needs to take a break more than I do. Besides, when I sit I age too much.

This morning the cold was exhausting and I wanted to sit down. Inside the tram there weren’t many people until there were.

In front of me was a man in his 30s. He frequently turned to look at the door, his eyes half-hidden under a flat cap. At each stop he rose halfway from his seat. A weary woman old enough to be his grandmother sat down.