Time in Your Flight

Once there were four families who lived in one neighborhood. They were all good friends. They went to each other's houses for Shabbas meals, the kids had playdates together, the fathers would have boys night and smoke some cigars and the mothers would get together for coffee.

All was peachy and dandy and other words from the 50's indicating contentment.

In the back of one of the mother's minds there was a shoe. And she was waiting for it to drop.

(Because it always does, she thought.)

Bang.

One of the families decide to move away.

Bang.

One of the families is talking about how they, too, do not belong here, maybe not in this country.

Bang.

One of the families is talking about something--terrible. So terrible.

You know how in novels there is the steady character, the static one, the straight man, who serves as our eyes in a changing world? That is the fourth couple, the last man standing. That would be us, the mutual friends to the rest of the families.

I am totally borrowing trouble.

(which I shouldn't because sometimes shoes hover in the air.)

(no they don't. Shoes don't hang in the air; that's ridiculous.)

(and anyway, you can't depend too much on friends. Because they're not family. Or their shoes. Because they're shoes.)

(I am having an arguement with myself in parenthesis.)

(I'll stop now.)

No one has moved yet. No one has signed any papers yet. No one has left the country yet. But I feel like the woman in the poem who dreams of turning back time, and of her her mother rocking to sleep again.

I just want things to stay the way they are.

Remember when we actually wanted to grow up?

Somebody hold me.