Day 224

My dream last night left me feeling empty and sad. Before I can tell you about my dream, I’ll give you the background to it. Living at my mom’s house in Mattituck means I don’t have a dryer. When it comes to doing laundry, I am at the mercy of the weather. Lately, it feels as if the fall has picked up where the spring left off — damp, dreary, and cloudy — not at all conducive for hanging laundry outside to dry. But my son and I were running out of underwear so I need to do a load of wash yesterday. I hung it out in the morning, and by the late afternoon it was still wet. I brought in the pants and shirts to hang on the drying rack inside, but figured I’d leave the socks and underwear on the line. They wouldn’t dry overnight, I knew that, but I hoped maybe in the morning, since there would be a bit of sun, they would finish drying.

In my dream, the laundry was still out on the line when I went out for a walk. I was in Long Island, but when I stepped outside I was in Queens, walking on Myrtle Avenue. Mom had asked me to pick up a pizza which I thought was odd since she never eats pizza for breakfast, but I did what she asked. But walking and reading, while carrying a pizza, was challenging. I wasn’t too far from home when it started to drizzle. My thoughts jumped immediately to the underwear and socks hanging on the line. If they got more wet they would never dry. They couldn’t stay on the line, but I couldn’t get to them fast enough to bring them in. So juggling my book and the pizza in one hand I pulled out my phone to call Dad. He could bring them in. I just needed to ask. I dialed his number but was immediately disconnected. I dialed again. Again I was disconnected. So I tried a third time, and now the phone was telling me it didn’t recognize the number. In frustration I tried one more time, but now the rain was coming down heavy. My book was saturated. The pizza ruined. The clothes most certainly were drenched. I slammed the phone into my pocked and sat down to cry hysterically. My tears woke me up. And I remembered that Daddy is dead. No wonder the call wouldn’t go through. I cried some more because I really didn’t need him to bring in the laundry, I just needed to hear his voice.

The dream set the tone for the rest of the day. It is damp and cloudy and cool. It feels like fall. Since we had nothing else planned for the day, my son dressed up in a suit and button down shirt and we went out to take his school picture. We took a hike to a bench my son remembered sitting on a few years ago with his grandfather. He wanted to start the shoot there. I took several pictures but he refused to smile. Next we headed to the beach, always a pretty place for photos, but again he refused to smile. I took more than fifty photos and he isn’t smiling in a single one. He looks terribly sad. But considering the year he’s had, all he has lost, would a smile even be appropriate. It sure wouldn’t be accurate.

I got home from the photoshoot to find three rejection emails in my inbox. One for a short story that’s been rejected now so many times I suppose I’ll give up submitting it. And two rejections from agents regarding the Pandemic Diaries. My story doesn’t interest them. I suppose it’s because I’m not famous and Dad was just an ordinary person, one of 225,000 killed. A statistic. I know my story speaks to a larger truth, a glimpse into the COVID reality that not even the news can convey, but no one cares. People prefer speaking in terms of numbers because then it removes the personal element. Maybe I should stop sending out queries. What I’ve learned through the years is that when agents say they are interested in memoirs or narrative non-fiction, they don’t care about how well something is written, they want stories that will sell. What sells is popularity. People care only about famous folk. Not ordinary people. Bland people. People like me, destined for the slush pile, followed by the trash can. 

Trump’s campaign isn’t helping my mental state. He continues to mock people who died. Pointing out that the majority of people who got infected recovered, as if dying meant you had some sort of character flaw. His supports, too, are horrible people. They care more about their 401ks and their stocks than the people who died. Money first. Not America first. But money. That’s all his rich supporters care about. Maintaining their wealth is more important than making sure people don’t die. But it’s always been that way. That’s why the poor don’t matter. We don’t make enough money to count. Again — another character flaw, I suppose. A teacher can work as hard as a doctor and put in more hours but a teacher’s salary will never be comparable to a doctor’s or a lawyers or a businessman’s. Of course it’s the people making the hefty salaries who continuously ensure that other salaries are kept low. Class structure must be maintained. The rich must always retain their right to shit on the poor. This pandemic has highlighted that. Aside of ER doctors and nurses, what other essential worker gets paid a decent salary? The rich have been able to hibernate, work from home, and continue to build their wealth while the essential workers who barely make enough to pay their bills have been left to cater to the rich. They aren’t dying, yet they are the ones influencing the laws that ensure they are protected while the rest of us aren’t.  

This evening my son asked if we could watch The Conners. I’ve been so mopey all day I thought a comedy might cheer me up. I needed to laugh. But the season opening wasn’t funny — not at all. It was far too realistic to make me laugh. But it did make me cry — which in all fairness is not all that hard to do lately. The show revolved entirely around the pandemic. Darlene and her boyfriend came to the realization that their magazine, the one they founded together, is not going to make it. Not in this economy ushered in by the pandemic. Darlene is crushed. She had just written what she believes is one of her best articles and it’s not going to be released. It will never be read. To help her father with the mortgage, so that he — and in turn they — won’t get evicted, she decided to take a job in a plastics factory. When she arrives to inquire about a job, she finds her sister already waiting on line. Becky asks, “Why aren’t you trying got get another writing job?” Darlene could have been me responding, “Because I’ve got 25 years of failure telling me that’s the wrong direction….I mean like what is wrong with me? No one wants me to be a writer. Take a hint? You know, it’s like, if I’d done anything else I wouldn’t be standing on this line starting over.” 

Starting over when — as my son pointed out yesterday — I’m closer to 70 than 20. Twenty-five years spent chasing dreams and being knocked down by failure. Poor choices. Character flaws. Bad luck. Lack of talent. A mix of all the above. Twenty-five years of going in the wrong direction, slamming into walls, and landing flat on my face. But life doesn’t last forever. And someday when it’s all over, I suppose it won’t matter that I never went anywhere, or succeeded at anything.