Lessons From the Kissing Booth

It was a year ago tomorrow that I stopped by a bar to meet some friends and strangers for a drink and some talk about Robocop and tuberculosis and walked back out into a world that had shifted slightly sideways. I couldn't have known it at the time, not even with all my rustling the next week about needing something unexpected, but by the fall I would be well down the path toward another hard lesson. I suppose I should know by now to be careful with what I wish for, or at least more specific, but there are some lessons I am unlikely ever to learn. Somehow the only thing that is ever actually unexpected is the universe's consistently indifferent sense of humor.

Still. If we could turn our blessings into money, we would have enough to purchase the moon. If we could turn our blessings into blueberries we could make a million giant pies. Blessings to frogs for gardens and symphonies of ribbits, to diamonds for a glow to outshine the sun. Everything could always be worse, but that has not yet stopped me from wanting everything instead to be better.

I find myself hoping that the spring will bring the sort of calm to be found in the lines of that Beckian Fritz Goldberg poem: "Each time we fall out of love we/ say it wasn't really love at all as if/ landing, a plane would say no, not actual sky." And even if not, whatever else happens will still be unexpected. That's just how springtime works.