Inch Worm

It’s August 3rd, 1952 in Pleasanton, Ohio. Jack Finney’s wife is out of town, so he decides to take his dog out for a long walk.

He is never seen again.

But there are reports all across the state of strange, hypnotic lights in the sky, and the town drunks are all having horrible hallucinations that the townspeople aren’t all who they seem to be.

Have the Pod People come to Pleasanton?

If you like to play Mafia, join us here. Signups are still open. If you don’t know what Mafia is, read this, and then join us! There will be plenty of newcomers in this game, so don’t be shy.

And you could get to be a Pod Person. Wouldn’t that be neato?

I’ve given away, thrown away, and sold a number of Steve’s possessions since his death, and haven’t had any qualms about any of them. Yesterday, I got his car out of the garage and took it to my sister’s house. She’s going to sell it for me.

That one thing, that car, is the first thing that has hurt. I don’t want the car. Not only is it a convertible, which has limited use in Ohio, but it’s an old convertible without the one thing I really love in a car–air conditioning!

I don’t like to drive it and I certainly don’t want to baby it.

But it was Steve’s and he loved it. He loved it.

I’ll be glad when it’s sold. I won’t have to worry about it sitting there, quietly rusting in the damp Ohio spring. I won’t have to think about it any more. But I will think about it. I’ll see someone tootling by in a convertible and wonder why it couldn’t be Steve, out enjoying the weather. Why it couldn’t be Steve. It couldn’t be Steve.

I hope it sells to someone who loves it. I hope it sells to someone who knows someone else loved it, too. I hope they think of him, once or twice. I hope they care.

My niece will be graduating from university next week, I was thinking to myself how proud Steve would have been. They weren’t extremely close, but he thought she was a really lovely person, and he didn’t think that about just anyone.

So many of us take for granted that a smart kid will go to college, will have these chances to succeed. Steve didn’t fall prey to that casual assurance. He didn’t get to do the college thing, and he was envious.

There were so many things he dreamed of. There were so many small things he dreamed of doing, of being, but he couldn’t find the energy. He was so tired.

And we take for granted that we can get out of bed, that we can mow the grass, that we can walk up stairs, and he couldn’t. So often he just couldn’t. And no amount of me knowing, intellectually, that he couldn’t changes how fundamental our disconnect was. I watched him struggle for a decade and I still could never get it. Because I have every confidence I will live to see fifty. I expect to be able to carry the groceries in from the car.

He knew his dreams were hopeless, but I would never accept that. I ignored what it suited me to ignore and assumed that with love all things were possible.

Now, of course, I delude myself that I get it. Now I think I’ve learned that last, hard lesson. Now I get to feel the straitjacket death wraps so snugly around us. But I’ll recover, and he couldn’t. I’ll survive, and he can’t. Our paths came so close, but never overlapped.

Love wasn’t enough to make up for all the things he had to say goodbye to, every dream he just had to shrug off.

How could I ever think it was?

One big thing Steve’s death has freed me to do is to give away so many of the things that were just taking up space in our lives. The older I get the less things seem to matter, the less I am willing to move when I vacuum, the less I want to dust, or pack.

Today, I gave away a huge collection of Steve’s fishing gear. I’m sure he had hundreds of dollars in it, but all I wanted was to find someone who would use it, to make another of those connections whereby my husband remains in this world through other people’s experiences. Maybe Eric will cast a line into a lake and think of Steve kindly, and what better legacy is there than that, really?

I’m keeping the cats for as long as they live. Everything else is negotiable. Want a kidney?