Addenda to Your Emergency Evacuation Plan

When one has spent a long time away, coming back doesn’t happen all at once. That’s one of the things we learn from The Princess Bride. For instance, this is my third day back at work after sitting with my father for two weeks as he went from life support to physical therapy, and sitting with my mother who we had to place in a home while he’s away, because she needs supervision, six years or so—they’re not sure—into Alzheimer’s. The first day back is learning to swim. It’s swim class, and I forgot to practice. Test day. It’s papers and clocks and where am I supposed to be next. It feels no more or less real than watching monitors at the hospital. The second day back is pretending I’m a newspaper. One-paragraph updates to each doorstep over the last two weeks, the not letting go, the something other than the inevitable. I’m unprepared for day three. I was listening to the radio on my thirteen-hour drive home, and Ben Affleck was telling Terry Gross the advice Kevin Costner gave him on directing: always know your second shot. If you’re only prepared for the first shot, you run the risk of panicking, the crew all standing there looking at you with the clock ticking. The second shot allows you the follow-through, the momentum to get the ball rolling. A little hedge. Likewise, Quetzalcoatlus, named after the winged Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, a pterosaur with a wingspan of up to 45 feet, had to plan its liftoffs, as it needed a wind of about 30 mph to get enough lift to get airborne, leaving it a fairly easy target when on land. That was from a science documentary I watched with the kids last night, and now I’m thinking that’s day three. Day three needs a 30 mph wind to take off. There are some people holding a Bible study in the next room while I’m typing, and it sounds like an indefinable knocking on my door, asking me what my favorite color is, only I can’t use any names of colors in my answer, because that’s how the indefinable rolls. It’s a good day, day three, compared to the really bad days, but compared to the really good days, it’s gone out for peanuts and hasn’t yet completed its travel forms. Day four is waiting off to the side, it will be clouds disguised as clouds. Maybe snipers in the forest.