I Can't Write

A story about not writing.

Because I went to dance class instead and I will always choose to go to dance class. My stories can wait.

Because a mom came to dance class with her daughter but she didn’t dance. She sat in the back of the studio and watched. She must be hurt, I thought as I pas de bourreed to Megan Trainor’s “Your Lips Are Moving.” Or maybe she was visiting, and doesn’t know there are at least three decent coffee shops and two Starbucks within a mile from here. Might be more fun to go to a coffee shop then watching a bunch of middle-aged women shake what God - and the last forty plus years - gave us. Besides, hasn’t she watched enough? It was not a nice thought. It was judgemental and cruel. I can’t write that. I am projecting how I feel onto this mom who just wants to sit down and watch her kid for an hour. It just seems to change things when a mom is watching. I want to release myself from that - release my children from it. When I dance, I seem to be able to but not completely on this day. “Look, look!” I wanted to tell her. “I’m having fun and this is hard! It can be both! It should be both! Look at this mistake I’m making. If you’re gonna make a mistake, do it to the beat of Pitbull! “ I felt responsible for her and her feelings that are none of my business. Still, I kept dancing and I kept wanting to ask her, “Don’t you want to try this? Don’t you want to try?”

Because after dance class the teacher stood at the door and opened a grocery bag full of tomatoes from her garden. “Take one! Take one!” she said offering the bag to us. “I have so many!” So I did. I held it in my hand the whole drive home, sliced it in fourths and sprinkled salt on it. It was raining and windy that morning. Something new was on its way. Here I was though, about three weeks into autumn, still tasting the summer sun. Still tasting what was.

Because later, when I was sitting at my desk, pen pointing to the page ready to strike, a yellow jacket was flying - trying to fly - outside my window but kept getting pummeled by the raindrops. Over the summer a group of them made their home in the brick chimney of our next door neighbor’s fireplace. I’ve been watching them for months now. They’ve terrorized me every morning because at five, when I turn my light on, they cling to the window screen, and they wait. “This is not where you live,” I want to tell them. Sometimes there are one - hundred of them on the screen, and I’m sure if they worked together they could make their way in. Hive mind and all that. But this one knew where her home was. She would aim herself at the hole between the bricks where she’d been flying in and out all summer but now the water fell and she couldn’t hold herself against it. She was so close to finding her way home and I didn’t know if she’d make it but I couldn’t look away and that’s why I can’t write.