The Story of How I Finally Get It

Just got a call from the Library.  Sting's waiting for me. 

They're still open for a little while, so I get in the car, alone for the first time in a pearl-string of days, and drive over to pick up the book.  "Broken Music", it's called.

I walk around a bit, browse, nothing new.  It's a crappy library but it's all we've got.  I consider taking out one of the L.M. Montgomery books, but I've got all of them; or getting an Atwood to read for the millionth time.  Books from my childhood.  I like comfortable; I like what fits.

There's nothing, though.  I don't have my kids with me, but I still feel their presence, they want me to hurry up because I take a long time at the Library.  I buy them lots of books, and as yet don't feel the hunger to visit the Library.

I do, though.

I think I might go and get a coffee.  I wander over to the desk, check out the book.  The main foyer of the building is humming with noise and full of boy hockey players and their families: practice night.  I walk out, it's cool out, with a breeze tonight. I open Sting's book and read the inner flap.

I stop dead, in the middle of the boy hockey players.  Their parents maneuver around me.  I flip to the back flap, read.

"This is how you escape.  This is how you escape."

Sting gets it.  *I* finally get it.  I know I get it, because I manage to get into the car and start to cry.  I don't go for a coffee.

What a crazy summer it's been.  It's not yet over.

Broken Music: A Memoir