Strawberries

In the gardens at home, it's strawberry season. Threading through the rocks and flowers of the front garden, in clumps and barrels by the vegetables, all behind the grapevine row, the berries must be ripe by now.

My family called strawberries my birthday fruit; end of June, they're growing sweet and everywhere, spreading into the path with thin green runners like weeds.

They're not mine anymore, the strawberries, but they're still the purview of little girls. Low growing in spottable red, familiar, and large enough that you can fill a bucket even while eating every other. The cousins come and it's like a day of magic at the fairyland house where I grew up.

Red ripe berries among sweet flowers, water from the house, and a silent soft cat threading by the blooming tree while three little girls pluck berries into the plastic jam pails tired around their necks.

Marriage

My friends were married a few weeks ago. It's weird because it's such a permanent thing that it seems rash, but your parents are there smiling quietly the whole time. It feels like maybe the parents should be jumping up, reminding you that tattoos look saggy when you age and are you sure you really want to look at that the rest of your life? Thirty, forty, fifty years from now?

Which is a reasonable reaction; at twenty-three, you have no idea what you'll care about when you're seventy. Maybe you'll still think that peace everlasting is important, but no longer think the Hopi symbol of it on your hip was such a great idea. Maybe you'll still love the same man and want to be around him every day, but for God's sake don't ink his name on the back of your hand. That shit doesn't come off.

Er, marriage. That also doesn't really come off, or rather it's like a tongue ring: you can commit to it, and then years later you can throw away the ring and hope the hole closes up, but it will probably leave a scar, and if nothing else the effects on your tooth enamel are permanent. You and that tongue ring committed to each other, and changed each other in permanent ways.

Anyway, it was weird to watch them walk down the aisle, simple, classic, in the woods, and have them make lifelong vows - vows to keep for several times longer than they've been alive, and everyone smile at the romance and love of the happy couple who have just done something so recklessly binding that they can never take it back as long as they live.

And it's amazing what soft music and cultural norms can do. As I sat their watching, I smiled too, and reached next to me for my partner's warm hand. Perhaps the very foolishness of the act is what makes it beautiful, because it means you're so in love you either can't see all the coming years, or that you see them and can't think of anything you'd rather do than cling hopelessly bound together as years hurtle by.

I look over and his eyes are open, his smile sly. He snakes his arm around my ribs, and in a haze of sleepy warmth, pulls me in. My face on his, I fall back to sleep.

The only percussion their voices needed was the tapping of his brown leather shoe on the leg of the microphone stand. The mic was adjusted short to their wooden chairs, so the center of the stand hit the floor as sharply as a snare in 2/4 time.

I wished she would sing more; he wrote, and played, and sang, and even tapped, but it was her blending harmonies that rounded the notes and made them beautiful. But she was happy to sit with her hands in her lap. Her voice would rise with his, creating the soul of the sad song as she watched her husband from beside his center stage, nothing but love in her eyes.

Closing a company is extremely emotional. It's rough, all the sensations of a hysterical jag stretched out across a couple of months. And you know it's coming; it's not like you don't know you're running out of money, but you're trying everything, really putting in your all, doubling down on caring and time. And the worst thing is, every few days or weeks, you end up with hope. Someone might buy a lot, someone might invest, someone else might hire your whole team to keep doing what you're doing. And you hope, because it really might work. It might not be over. Because initial success is at least as implausible as eventual failure. Neither feels quite deserved, and at the end of the day you don't know why anything is really happening.

With the wisdom of reflection, I remember that for months at the beginning, I told people that our success felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was true; how could we be allowed to be celebrated, given money by strangers to work on something we thought was interesting in a space and time all our own? Because that's the other thing: it did feel like success, that whole period of time. Learning, growing, working together in a way we got to choose, and getting paid- that is the dream. That is success, even if it doesn't last.

The strangest part about the other shoe dropping is that if it takes too long, you don't really believe it's going to fall. And then when you realize it will, it seems like the sky is falling with it.

That's probably part of the reason the failure is so emotional, other than the pure and simple fact that it is failure. You've pinned quite a lot up there, on the underside of the sky: who you are as a person, for instance. When people meet you, they know you as that person who is so passionate about her company and the problems it is trying to solve. That thing looks like your one success, and all your friends and family are so proud. You've moved your life for it, poured out your time for it, more than staked your reputation to it. To many, even you, it is the thing that you are.

And so when you think you might have to shut it down, it's a bit emotional. Because it won't work. Because you still have hope. Because your friends and family are asking how it's going, and the real answer is both too heavy and too unstable, so should you distance yourself from the failure, or from your friends and again double down?

There are two things that must be in reach when I wake up: a water bottle and a timepiece. My cat thwarts both.

I wake thirsty in a way that brooks no metaphors, and reach left. But I have to reach with my right arm, because the cat is lying on my left. I can't quite reach; I'd have to roll over.

Of course, I can't; if I rolled I'd be laying my cat, and despite all logic I like her enough that I don't want to kill her. This despite the fact that she likes to wake me at night by walking onto my chest, lying down to purr and press her front paws endearingly against my windpipe. (I assume she thinks this is endearing.)

So I'm tired when I wake to a cat on my arm, and because I always neglect to set an alarm- I assume I'll wake up naturally, one way or another- I need to know the time. Because I'm not sure if I'm allowed to go back to sleep and thus avoid the water bottle/cat situation.

As I write this, my cat is snuggled against my chest; she spoons. It's the pleasant part of her routine, which is another reason not to let her know I'm awake if I'm not yet ready to get up.

Her routine: if I stir, she gets up from wherever she's sleeping-usually the foot of the bed, though right now she's going through a phase where she likes my pillow. Anyhow, she stands, walks up to my face area, and starts cuddling aggressively.

This is sort of nice; soft cat cuddling is a lovely way to wake up, assuming you meant to be awake. She rubs the top of her head over my cheeks, purring in good faith as the little hairs she sheds continuously settle around my nose.

I draw her out by offering my hand, somewhere away from the medial line of my body. Every time, she goes for the hand, five fingers much better at scratching her cheeks than my mediocre chin can provide.

I pet her a bit, and then if I'm lucky, she'll settle down on my left arm, purring, nestling close so she's all encircled but for those front paws, which rest on my shoulder, massaging with claws. I have a thousand tiny scars from a thousand tiny wounds of affection on my left shoulder, but sometimes I can fall asleep as this goes on.

This, of course, yields the left arm predicament we started with: I'm thirsty, and it's light out, but I can't see the clock. Do I check the time, and risk restarting the cycle if I'm too early, and should sleep?

Bosses

There's something very off-putting about having a boss. Especially if you haven't had one before. Particularly if you already knew the person.

Anywhere else, you'd meet as colleagues. "What do you do?" "I manage a team of developers." "I design user workflows." "I'm a dancer." "I freelance." "I write." It barely matters what it is you do; you're equals. You converse under the assumption that each other's time is valuable and their insights interesting.

That's not to say bosses don't respect their ..what do you call them? Underlings? Peons? There's probably a better word, but that's what springs to mind.

It's unnatural, is my point, to put one person *over* the other. Where does that lead? Why does that person get to decide, to lead you?