It’s pie season here at the Pearse’s even though I’m the only one who eats pie. First the chocolate satin pie and then the toffee apple one with cool whip. I gripped the flab on my hips and thought man, I’m going to have a lot of work to do come spring.

I was now making serious plans to get my ears pierced. Charlotte was taking a senior skip day meaning no school for seniors, non-negotiable. Maybe we could go today, she said (she was getting her seconds done).

I was hoping my contract gig could lead to a full-time job at this large software company and wondered what they’d think of me in my mid 50s with a ponytail and gold hoops if we ever met in person. I think something snapped in me or was fraying the way rubber bands get small tears and one day just break. I stopped giving a shit. It felt reckless and irresponsible but somehow freeing.

With the recent wind storm I remembered there was a large Doug Fir on the neighbor’s property our arborist John Lewis thought looked suspicious, a ring of mushrooms around the base was a sign of root rot he said. It was a very big tree and our house was right in the fall line (the master bedroom). I don’t like neighborly confrontations but this called for it. So I texted the arborist and our neighbor and said we’re scheduling a hazardous tree assessment. So we’ll see.

Times like these I feel like a man and all grown up. Good to counterbalance the times I don’t, which is often.

When I dream I’ve noticed that details get mixed up in a haphazard way. Like last night the Japanese guy from the company where I now work was our child’s therapist and our kids were small again. Context and timing get reshuffled. It’s like that child’s toy from the 1950s Mr. Potato Head, where you fit the body parts into different sockets; dreams transpose plot points and characters. But the dream logic part of our brain that lacks a sense of order, I think it’s still onto something. Maybe it sorts by theme instead, or runs on metaphor. Maybe it’s our oracle.

In the early morning the pie called to me from the fridge. The chocolate satin is always the first to go; the fruit pies get overlooked and linger. A pecan pie I could eat in one go. The toffee apple pie said RICH & FLAKY CRUST on the side of the box in a delicate, old timey script. That script called to me. It would taste great with my coffee and I’d have all day to burn it off.

Sometimes I wondered if the desire to drink shifted into other impulses. Or if I was born with a kind of energy that needed constant adjustments, the tightening and loosening, sometimes just letting go.

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Memoir