all along the ocean beaches stares up empty at the sky

I used to hear my mother's music floating down the hall on Sunday nights. She did aerobics in her bedroom. She did aerobics for hours and hours and then she ran up and down the huge flight of stairs so many times that by the time I started running there was a deep path worn into the carpet.

The tape she played had a lot of songs on it but for some reason it's Jackson Browne's "Tender Is The Night" that sticks in my memory. I think it was cool down music at the end of her work out. I was a bit young to appreciate Jackson Browne. I didn't understand the lyrics then but without the benefit of understanding the words the song created an emotional response in me that was repeated every Sunday night. I didn't recognize it as sadness when I was a child.

The sadness is vague, not attributable to an event or problem or issue. I can't quite grasp the reason it makes me feel the way it does, so achingly sad and alone.

I heard it yesterday when we were out for lunch, playing in the restaurant. It's funny, I could hear my mother's breath in the chorus. When you're ready to surrender...

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Sunday now. We're hatching small plans to give meaning to the day. But they're unnecessary. Nothing else is needed but time and his company.

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We finally went back to the pet store to pay for the doggy sweater we accidentally stole. We explained how we'd given the cashier the tag thinking he would use the UPS code on it to charge us, while the dog stood directly in front of him wearing the sweater we'd meant to purchase. He seemed confused by our story and didn't know how to take our money without selling us something at the same time. (It was, of course, the same cashier who'd neglected to charge us in the first place.) Finally he had to ask for help from another cashier who was so intent on giving the puppy some treats and petting him that she couldn't seem to focus on what he was asking her either. Finally, forty-two dollars poorer, we left the store and discovered we hadn't been charged for the bag of dog cookies we'd purchased at the same time. This time we were still out front of the store and the situation was much more easily fixed. Sometimes honesty is more of a nuisance than it seems worth to keep one's karmic debt paid down.

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I'm going to school tonight to meet with the teacher for whom I am substituting. Since he's staying on leave longer than planned, he will need to provide me with more direction on what to do with his students next. If he continues to provide as little help as he did at our first meeting, I am not anticipating this meeting being particularly helpful. I am frightened that by being there an extra two weeks I am somehow going to end up being responsible for report cards or parent teacher interviews or something else equally terrifying.

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