How We Do It: Part IX of a series

Sometimes the humming goes on for so long and so loudly that I say shut up to her in my mind. I put her in her wheelchair, her stroller we call it and decide last minute to walk all the way to the Farmer's Market and Oliver rides his bike and asks to go ahead and I know he wants to get away so I say yes. The day, the blue of the sky and the green of everything else stops the humming and I can hear the cars rush by and the slap of my angry feet on the pavement. I'm pushing up a hill and thinking of guilt and regret of who I hate and why I shouldn't. I'm thinking of the years to go and the woman in the private room who tells me like the woman at the well gives water that it's so hard, you're working so hard, it's too much. So many people stare and one tilts her head with sympathy but it's the wrong kind, she's trying too hard, so she's the one I'll remember along with the too-narrow aisles and the fruit out of reach, too many people and I feel for a moment, that I'm in a painting, a circus painting, perhaps by Lautrec, Oliver stands on the seat of his bike in this painting and takes off, flying away into an orange sky. On the way home, the cars rushing by sound like waves and the sun glints off of her curls and Oliver is just a speck ahead, free.

Sometimes, we don't do it and that's how we do it.