Here and there at 43: Not a New Year's blog

Picture it! Five months ago. 

The day before Toni Morrison died, I was in the Summit Avenue Arby's drive-through picking up a sandwich for a friend/coworker on my way back to work after a morning in the field. I sat there emailing myself photos of tiny houses, when I noticed the truck in front of me was taking a long time at the pickup window. The brake lights flashed on and off. The driver made erratic arm movement. Flailing. The window opened and a female employee stuck her head way out, tapped on the driver's window. The window rolled down a few inches. The lady held eye contact with the driver and nodded. No bag of food. The driver didn't move. 

Just my luck. 

The worker leaned further out of the window and looked back at me. I rolled my window down. 

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, he's having a hard time," the woman called. 

The driver then, he stuck his arm out and yelled, "I'm having a hard time!" 

I didn't know what else to say or do but yell back, "It's ok! We've all been there!" Because, if you know me you know I have been there, specifically 2016-2018. (Remind me to tell you about the time I was asked to sing my college fight song in a job interview.) 

That's when another Arby's worker came out and convinced the man to pull forward and park. I inched up and the lady was shaking her head as she handed me my bag. "He comes in all the time. He's been through a lot." She didn't say what was a lot, and I didn't ask. As I pulled out of the parking lot I could see the hard time man just sitting in his truck. I imagined he'd just lost his wife, couldn't find a job, or maybe his adult kids wouldn't speak to him. Whatever it was, it was heavy. At that point I decided the tuna kit I had waiting for me back at the office wasn't going to cut it. There was a Biscuitville right around the corner, too.

I pulled in, to Biscuitville, where I had the drive-through all to myself. My order is always the same. Turkey sausage and egg on an English muffin with a hashbrown. The voice on the speaker said, "I'm sorry. We don't have turkey sausage or English muffins." I was incredulous, hungry, and emotionally spent from a morning of touring tiny houses and then the Arby's crisis. 

I paused. The voice paused. I said, "So, you're telling me you're all out of turkey sausage and English muffins?"

The voice was patient, resolute, and so, so very young. "We've never carried turkey sausage or English muffins."

I felt the blood rise in my throat. "Ok, I'm crazy and I've been imagining the past ten years of ordering turkey sausage on English muffins at Biscuitville. Is that what you're telling me?"

And what the voice said next hit me so hard I should probably put it on a t-shirt. 

"Ma'am, this is Bojangles." 

I looked around. Sure enough. I was in the Bojangles drive-thru. I hadn't paid attention. I thought I was at Biscuitville. I was not at Biscuitville. I quietly ordered a sausage biscuit and when I pulled up to the window, the voice (attached to a young man, like 18) smiled at me. 

"You doin' ok today, Ma'am?" I told him I'd had a morning and I probably just needed to eat. Guess what he said? He said, "I gotcha. We've all been there."

I should mention the NC A&T band was playing. And if you've ever been on East Bessemer in August with your windows down, you know what it sounds like. "You hear that? I imagine that's what it sounds like at the beach," he said. 

"You've never been to the beach?" I asked him.

"No, not yet. But I'll get there," this young kid sage said. 

The whole face-to-face lasted maybe 45 seconds.

"There. There is an actual place. And sometimes it's Bojangles." I wrote that down on a scrap of paper back at my office. This a good story, I thought. I tucked the slip of paper into my purse, told myself I'd turn it into something later, and then I didn't. The next day Toni died. 

All this time passed.I kept the tattered sticky note with "there is an actual place" in my purse and three days ago, on my 43rd birthday, it fell out when I was paying for my own birthday pizza. There is an actual place. 

"Song of Solomon" is the reason I pursued two English degrees and devoted my life to words. Toni Morrison wrote a character named Milkman Dead and that was it for me. I turn to her often. Toni famously said "If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it." Well, this isn't a book, but you know I don't think there are enough pieces written about finding grace in a biscuit. Or in a birthday pizza. So, it seemed like the time to write it down was now, on the first day of 2020. 

2019 was good to me. I won't make any traditional New Year's resolutions for 2020. But then there are all these scraps of paper I have, a book or two I want to read. 

New year, new bulb in my salt lamp.