I pick up a guy on the south side of the city. It’s snowing. He gets in the car and smells like pot.
“Hey, thanks, man. How are you?” he asks, and his voice is gravel, a dead impersonation of BB King. I wonder if he sings the blues. He certainly speaks them.
“I’m good, I’m good,” I say, confirming his destination, and we pull onto Queen Street, head north. He’s a chatty guy for the first minute, then gets a phone call and quiets down after that.
The snow is blustery. The day is cold and windy. We were supposed to get a foot of snow but all we have are wet roads.
“How about that snow, man?” he asks, laughing. “I woke up this morning and couldn’t believe it. Nothing but cold water.”
“That’s about the best way of saying it.”
He laughs again, gritty and deep.
“Did you grow up around here?” I ask him.
“Me? No. I’ve only been here for about five years. I grew up in New York City, trained as a tradesman.”
“So how’d you end up here?”
He grimaces. “I was working for this contractor, and all of his tools got stolen. He couldn’t afford to replace them all, so he only kept on the old-timers. I had to find something else. Had some friends here in Lancaster and they were on my case all the time about moving here. They found me some work, so I came.”
We drive for a moment, north on Queen Street. It’s cold, and the sun is in and out. People walk as fast as they can from here to there, eager to cross the street, eager to get where they’re going.
“Now I’ve got a girlfriend here, and a kid.”
“Congrats,” I say.
He smiles. “Funny story. I was sure we were having a boy. Positive. And that’s all I wanted, a boy. So, we were in the doctor’s office and he asks if we want to know the baby’s sex. ‘Let’s find out,’ my girlfriend said. Well, the doctor knew I wanted a boy—I had been telling him all about the entire appointment, how I knew it was a boy. He looked at us and said, ‘It’s a boy!’ Then he laughed. ‘Just kidding,’ he said. ‘You’re having a girl.’ I almost punched him in the face. I told him if he was younger, I would have knocked him down. Then, I sat there and cried like a baby.”
“You did!” I exclaimed, laughing. He was laughing, too.
“I did. Man, I bawled. But the thing was, I just couldn’t imagine raising a girl. I thought my heart would break. I thought, if she falls off her bike, I’ll pick that bike up and break it in half. If someone treats her bad, I’ll kill ‘em. I just didn’t think I could take it.”
The snow comes again, flurries, sweeping up over the front end of the car like stars in space.
“Now, she probably has you wrapped around her little finger.”
It is 7am, and I have already been up for nearly 5 hours, having driven someone to an airport in Allentown and back in the wee hours of the morning. I left home around 3am and returned around 6am and made a batch of baked oatmeal that should just about be ready by the time the kids wake up. The house is starting to stir–Maile came down and joined me, the two of us talking quietly in the kitchen, appreciating the time. Now Abra is in the shower, singing. Children come down the stairs, one at a time. Leo crawls into my lap. I can hear Sam wandering the upstairs.
I had a lot of time to think this morning during those long dark hours on the road, listening to a Lenten playlist my friend Megan created on Spotify and then, later, listening to the audio version of Wallace Stegner’s epic, Angle of Repose. It is the story of Susan and Oliver Ward, their life in the early days of the West, their long years of trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing. It is a story of hope holding out for a very long time, and then when hope is finally realized, they discover that other complications have set in.
It left me wondering what I am waiting for. What long-held desires of mine are keeping me from this present moment? What stresses about money or time hold my eyes enslaved to the future?
* * * * *
There is the life we want and there is the life we have, and while there is nothing wrong with the wanting, if we’re not careful it can devour everything.
* * * * *
The sun is rising now and a gray light filters down onto James Street. Our porch light is visible through the barely opened blinds, as is the brick rowhome across the street. This is the only day I have. What will I do with it?
E.L. Doctorow has famously said that “[Writing is] like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Life is like that, too, I think.
This part of the city is dark and feels empty. There are only a few streetlights, and the windows in the houses are, for the most part, unlit. My wife Maile and I get out of our car and walk towards the front door of a small duplex. Lines of light shine through the slanted blinds. A dim, yellow porch light looks down on us like a low-hanging moon.
“Oh, look,” Maile says. “They put out a small American flag.” It’s the kind they hand out at parades, stiff, clinging to a long, wooden stick. The stick is deep in the ground beside the sidewalk.
I tap lightly on the window and hear footsteps thunder through the house—some coming down the stairs, some racing from the kitchen at the back. The door swings open and the screen is pushed towards us and there they are, Mohammad’s four boys, grinning as if I’m Santa. Maile and I go inside and take off our shoes.
The house smells wonderfully of foreign food. It is bright inside, and warm, especially compared to the February night. Mohammad shakes my hand and pulls me in for a hug—he is not a tall man, with skin the color of tan leather, dark eyes, and gray hair cropped short.
“Shawn! Where have you been? I put the coffee on 30 minutes ago!”
“I know! I know. I’m sorry. It took us a while to get the kids to bed.”
“No problem. Don’t worry. Come in, come in!”
His boys flock around us, eager, excited to have guests. I shake each one’s hand, all the way down to their mischievous youngest. He grins and at first he doesn’t know what to do, then he exaggerates his hand shake and I pretend he’s hurt my shoulder. He giggles and runs off.
I look at those boys and can’t help but think about how they fled Syria five years ago, how Mohammad had to load them down with backpacks full of food and water, tried to determine how much weight each boy could carry. Fathers should not have to do this. Father’s should not be in a situation where they are deciding how many water bottles a nine-year-old can carry through the night. Who should carry the baby? Who should walk at the back of their small line through the darkness?
* * * * *
“Here,” Mohammad says, handing me the mug full of dark, dark coffee, and I take a sip, the caffeine shooting through my veins.
Moradi, Mohammad’s wife, comes down and greets us. She has a kind face, soft eyes, in spite of all they have been through. She smiles at Maile and hugs her, and the two of them talk about work and family and motherhood. When they hit a language barrier, and this is often, the oldest son steps in and translates.
“We brought a game,” I say, showing them the box: Connect Four.
“I have that in my school!” one of the boys shouts, and we tear it open, put the thing together. I sit on the floor across from their third son. He is around ten, and he is very competitive. Every time one of us has three in a row, he shouts, unable to bear the tension of the pending win. When I finally beat him, he groans loudly and falls backward. We all laugh.
“Shawn, here, look at this,” Mohammad says, and I sit up on the sofa while the boys push in to take over the game next. He hands me his green card paperwork. “The last time I looked up this serial number, it said error. Something isn’t right.”
I take his phone, already at the correct website, and input the number on his application. A message appears.
“I don’t know, Mohammad. But this says your application has been processed and your card was mailed out yesterday.”
“Yes?” he shouts, grabbing the phone. Everyone in the house cheers. He hands me his wife’s application. “Check this one.”
We go down the row, checking everyone’s green card application, and an enormous cheer rises when we confirm each person’s pending status. Their cards are on the way. It is Christmas in February.
* * * * *
There are shouts from the other room. The boys are arguing about the game, and the youngest has taken it hostage. The older boys protest. Mohammad calls the little one over, and he comes, reluctantly, dragging his feet.
Mohammad pulls him close and they argue in quiet voices, the boy’s lips grazing his father’s rough cheek as he pleads his case. Mohammad alternates between listening quietly and talking sternly. Their Arabic floats around us, above us, like a beautiful thing unattainable.
Then, I recognize a word the little boy uses often, in his most pleading tones.
“Abba.”
He says it over and over again. Sometimes, when he is at a loss for words, it is the only thing he says.
“Abba, Abba, Abba.”
The word Jesus used when he addressed his Heavenly Father.
Abba.
* * * * *
It is late. We pull ourselves away despite Mohammad’s offended protests that we are leaving too early. I laugh.
“It is always too early for you,” I say. He smiles.
“Come again, Shawn. Any time. Come again. Please.”
Maile hugs Moradi and I tease the boys and we walk outside, all of them standing in the doorway, in the cold, watching us go. They wave and wave, even after we are in the car, and then we are driving through the dark, towards the city. I can feel the light.
* * * * *
Did you know Mohammad and I have put together a book and it’s coming out in October? It’s all about his family’s trek to get here and how our friendship came to be–the book is called Once We Were Strangers.
The African-American woman climbs into the back of my car.
“Sorry if you had to walk a bit to find me,” I explain. “Sometimes the app drops the location pin kind of far away.”
She laughs.
“No problem. Happens all the time.”
“So, are you heading to work?” I ask her.
“Yeah,” she says, telling me where she works. Somehow the subject of children comes up, and she gushes over her 10-month-old, talks about all the trouble he’s getting into, how he’s just starting to stand up, how when she gives him a bath she gets as wet as him. When she talks about him, it’s like she’s talking about light, or air.
“Have you worked third shift for a while?” I ask her.
“No,” she says, her voice growing quiet. “I used to work second shift, but I missed my baby too much. This schedule works better for me. I work 9pm to 7am, while he’s sleeping.”
We drive together through the dark streets of the city, joined together by the common love for our children.
* * * * *
I pick up another African-American woman, and she climbs into the back with a chattering little boy.
“Mommy, I want to eat my chicken nuggets!” he protests, and I hear my own three-year-old in his voice.
“How old is your little boy?” I ask. I can’t see her – it’s dark in the car – but I can hear the smile in her voice.
“He’s 2 1/2. He’s a handful.”
“Sounds adorable to me,” I say, laughing. She smiles.
U2 comes on the radio, an old song from Rattle and Hum, and she sings quietly along with Bono in the back seat of my car.
I have run I have crawled I have scaled these city walls These city walls Only to be with you
But I still haven’t found What I’m looking for But I still haven’t found What I’m looking for
She has a terrific voice, and I wish she would let it fly, just belt it out there in the back seat of my car.
* * * * *
I park on James Street. It’s late. Very late. I walk the cold sidewalk to the front door, unlock it, let myself in, turn the deadbolt and latch the chain behind me.
The house is warm. The kitchen light is on. Lucy sits at the table, working on a project.
“Hey, girl,” I say. “What are you doing up?”
“My project,” she says, her lip trembling. “I guess I didn’t save it right. I don’t know what happened. I lost all the work I did over the weekend.”
“Oh, shoot,” I say. I sweep the kitchen floor. Put some dishes away. She types persistently at the keys.
I go upstairs and tell Maile I’m home – she’s already hibernating under the covers. The cold presses in at the windows, and our Christmas tree lights up the bay window area of our bedroom. We whisper for a few minutes. My eyes are heavy and bloodshot. The covers call my name.
“I’d love to snuggle up here,” I say, “but our daughter is still at work downstairs and I hate to leave her there alone.”
Maile nods, smiles, kisses me, closes her eyes. I walk back down the hall and the stairs with their creaking boards, back down to the kitchen.
“I’ve got some work to finish up,” I say, setting up my computer beside hers. We type together, our fingers clicking over the keys.
“Check this out,” I say, starting up my new Spotify list. “I haven’t shared this with anyone else yet. I think you’ll like it.”
So, there we sit, the two of us, listening to Johnny Cash and Amos Lee and Jason Isbell. This is, I think, how we get through life: sitting side by side, working through the unexpected glitches together.
Six months and one week ago, one of my lifelong dreams came true – a novel with my name on it was released into the world by a publisher. The Day the Angels Fell. Sometimes, I still find it hard to believe.
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I pick the guy up at the corner of College and Buchanon.
“Hey, can we head down to my house first? I have to pick up my badge.”
So, instead of heading to his main destination, 25 minutes west of the city, we head south into the heart of the city. He directs me south on Duke.
“Turn right here and stop at the end of the street,” he says. It’s a dark little corner of the world – no street lights, no house lights shining through the blinds. He crawls out. There’s a guy on the sidewalk behind us. He hands my customer something. The customer hops back in.
“Okay, I’m good.”
We head west. It’s a good fare, especially for that time of night, probably close to $20. He’s a nice guy, asks questions about me (which very few people do). I gather that his car is broken down and he’s on his way to work.
“So, where do you work?” I ask him.
He names one of the largest companies in the world. He works third shift, from 8pm to 6am, five days a week. Right now they’re on mandatory shifts – they’re cranking stuff out.
“This company, their sales are over 50 billion a year,” he says.
“You’d think they could throw you a billion,” I say, smiling. “They probably wouldn’t miss it.”
He laughs a hearty laugh.
“They’re pretty generous with us, pay us well. We get a good bonus every quarter. And three weeks of vacation. I ain’t never heard of a company that does that.”
“You’ve talked me into it,” I say. “I’ll fill out an application when I get there.”
He laughs. “No doubt. It’s a good place to work. If I can just get used to this third shift.”
We pull into a small town twenty minutes west of the city. I pull down a dark side road. “My ride’s picking me up here,” he explains.
I drop him off. It’s an $18 fare. I turn for home.
