Jacob Heric

What would you do if you were given three months off to do whatever it was you wanted to do? What if you were allowed to hit the pause button on your career, take a break from work during your prime earning years, and just do whatever it was you wanted to do?

Well, I can’t really answer that truthfully as I didn’t write up a list of priorities and then hit the pause button and start checking things off. But, I am wrapping up three months away from work and I thought it would be a good time to list what it was I did, why I did it and why I think it was important.

First, a little context. As I mentioned earlier (apologies in advance for the recapitulation, but it bears repeating), the primary impetus for hitting the pause button in the first place was that my daughter (my four year old) fractured both her tibias in a very halloween appropriate accident in the fantastic Evergreen Cemetery near our house. Long story short, she scurried away from her mother (who was occupied chasing down our one year old) and tried to climb a tombstone. It toppled on her legs and fractured both her tibias and she spent a night in the hospital and seven weeks in casts. Though it was mortifying (pun intended and only possible in light of her full recovery…read on) and horrifying for her and us, she was chipper throughout and handled the ordeal with grace and is now %100 recuperated and back in pre-school and running and jumping like never before.

So, I never really made a decision to pause my career. The decision was made for me by her accident. And because of that, I am grateful for the accident. This sounds weird I know. But I assure you, I wish the accident never happened and I would go back and undo it if I could. But I can’t. I have no choice but to consider it in conjunction with all of its effects and repercussions and process it and asses it thus.
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“People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues, and shake their heads and suggest, oh, so very delicately.”

Norman Bates said that in Psycho. He said it in the parlor scene as Marion nibbled on sandwiches, taxidermy looming, and politely suggested that Norman put his mother in the madhouse. We watched it the other night, streamed it on netflix (I always said I was never going to be one of those people who put a television in their bedroom, but here we are logging countless hours on the macbook in bed watching movies). It’s a great film. Lots of long, jarring shots: Marion’s face on the bathroom floor, Norman’s neck and chin above the guest register.
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This year was especially accomodating for the annual tree gathering adventure due to copious amounts of snow. Even the sign that reminds us where to turn was buried in snow, which caused us to drive an extra 30 miles in the wrong direction (every turn looking more like the last). But, no matter, we eventually got there and bagged a beautiful tree. It helped that it was completely covered in snow so we couldn’t see what it really looked like until we got it home. There, it turned out strangely symmetrical.

Rosa’s imagination (and…um…ours) is put to the chalkboard above the kitchen counter.

Without fail, this is where you will find us eating an everything bagel with chili garlic (Jacob), a plain with Mert’s pimento cheese (Amy) and a plain with house smoked salmon (Rosa).

I was reminded of pine trees (which rarely go out of my mind in winter…how could anything that keeps it’s green in winter be far from thought?) today while listening to pandora radio. Winter has not been kind so far but my rhododendron comforts me in the morning as I pass it to get the bus. There are a lot of long needle pines along the way too. They have not fared as well this and last winter. The snow has been heavy and icy and many have lost a lot of limbs or gone down altogether. They appear to go happily though, hanging around dead, perfect green splinters preserved in dirty and disintegrating snowpack. I know how they feel. Winter makes me relish the shortness of life. While idling solitary at the bus stop, having long since stopped wondering about the bus, the baying wind binds this idea to my brain. It’s a warm idea that subtracts me and negates me. It makes me feel brave in humility. It makes me feel healthy in diminishment. It makes me long to disappear beneath the rearing light. Under the groaning waves of the faltering evergreens, I’ll gladly drown. What is winter for if not for loneliness, pneumonia and for reminding you that you are little more than a desolate meerkat in the desert night nattering to yourself about food and shelter for a few brief days before you’re extinguished, having accidentally nibbled on a scorpion you mistook for a delicious grub. Winter is winter. I was not once and I will not be again. In the meanwhile, I’ll be a pleasant winter herbage, not wilting by nature but not opposing it.

We bought our biennial subscription to cable (hello Time Warner, fuck you I hate you) at the Cumberland County Fair. Who doesn’t buy their cable at the fair? This year it was $39.95 for a year of digital cable. Not as good as the $29.99 I got for basic cable two years ago, but better nonetheless than the $57.95 that they normally charge for garbage television. It’s a racket, we know it, paying anything for commercial television. But it’s better than ritualistic suicide or violent hard drinking, both things that come to mind on dark, raw February nights. So, we indulge ourselves as winter comes.

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