The Cracker Sleeve Was the Only Decisive Thing

Four-thirty on a Tuesday. We had maybe ninety minutes before we needed to be in the gym changing our shoes, which seemed like enough time to look at one specific page together and make a reasonable decision about it. That was the plan.

The page was a continuing education certification, something Simone had flagged a few weeks ago and I'd written a draft-folder sentence about and then left alone, the way I leave things when I'm not sure whether I'm avoiding them or just giving them space. We opened the laptop. We read the page. We read a different page. We went back to the first page. Simone pointed at a specific line and said something that made me look at the ceiling for a full five seconds, not because she was wrong but because she was right in a way that rearranged the question rather than answering it.

The moment right after Simone said the thing.

The thing she found, and she always finds the thing, I want to be clear about this, was that the certification isn't really a question about whether we want the credential. It's a question about what we think comes after it. Which is a different question. A bigger one. One that does not fit inside ninety minutes on a Tuesday with climbing shoes waiting in the bag.

She found the thing. She always finds the thing.

We did not reach a conclusion. We finished the crackers. We went to the gym. I wrote three draft-folder sentences on the bus home that I don't think are about the certification at all, but I'm going to let them sit for a while and find out. That feels like the right pace for it. October has a particular quality of light that makes things seem more answerable than they are, I've learned to be a little careful with that.