I have been unemployed since November, which is a sentence I have repeated often enough that somewhere along the way I apparently started believing it meant I have not been employed, and last night, somewhere between twenty-five students in Indonesia laughing their way through English words some of them had been afraid to say an hour earlier and me sitting here in Salt Lake City trying to convince them that there really, truly, absolutely was NO WRONG ANSWER, I had one of those rather inconvenient realizations about myself that had apparently been following me around for months, patiently carrying the evidence in its mouth, waiting for me to stop moving long enough to see what it had brought me.
Because what the fuck have I actually been doing since November?
I worked Sundance, whatever WORK means when the currency is exhaustion and movies and taking care of people; I executive produced a film; I went to Bali where I was supposedly going to repair my nervous system and instead came home carrying villages and people and plans in my pockets; I showed up for graduates in Myanmar; I spent twenty-four days helping search for August; I worked on Purple Alert until it became LAW; I went to Burning Man convinced I had absolutely nothing left to give and then, apparently by muscle memory, kept finding whoever needed water or help or somebody willing to sit down in the dust and stay there for a while. And yesterday, before I taught a room full of people in Indonesia how much fun it can be to get the answer completely WRONG, I somehow found myself talking with someone who might actually be able to help bring solar power to villages there.
Meanwhile this little creature has been following me around with all of that clenched between its teeth while I keep announcing, to anyone who asks and especially to myself, that I am unemployed.
And I know exactly whose handwriting is all over that particular bit of nonsense.
ALBERT.FUCKING.NEAL.
My father grew up on Cape Cod, which explains the accent and nothing else about the man. I grew up at his dinner table, where current events weren’t current events so much as an entrance exam you passed before you were allowed the peas, and I was expected to read the Washington Post and the New York Times every day, know what was on fire in Washington and Moscow and Beirut before supper, then sit down and discuss it with a man who did not care, even slightly, that I was a child.
I was three.
THREE.
Other three-year-olds got applause for knowing the cow says MOO. I was expected to have a position on foreign policy.
I am the SON my father never had.
There it is.
I don’t say that with sadness, or even accusation, because what he handed me at that table was enormous: the conviction that citizenship isn’t a noun, that paying attention is an obligation, that if you’ve been given access, education and a voice, you use them, and that it’s a kind of indecency to know someone is in trouble and decide it isn’t your problem.
The thing about ALBERT.FUCKING.NEAL is that “that’s great” has never actually been a complete sentence. There is no period after it. There is barely even a comma. You can hear the BUT already warming up in the bullpen while you’re still telling him the good news.
I could call him from the actual village in Indonesia, standing beneath the first solar panel while twenty-five newly fluent English speakers sang the national anthem and I simultaneously found three missing people and passed another piece of legislation, and somewhere around the time I said, “Dad, you are not going to fucking BELIEVE this,” Albert would already be leaning over the dugout rail waiting for the next pitch.
“Yeah, yeah, Jennifah, that’s great, BUT WHAT ABOUT…”
And apparently I learned his punctuation.
I can put a period after almost anything except my own usefulness.
Which is how I found myself last night, after those students had spent an hour making me laugh so hard I forgot for stretches of time that I was supposed to be the teacher, already thinking about what I had not done yet. Not what had just happened, not the faces that had changed over the course of the hour, not the student who had started out barely willing to speak and then kept speaking, not the sheer ridiculous JOY of watching people discover that being wrong in English is survivable. I was already somewhere else, mentally circling the next thing, the next problem, the next person who might need me, the next pitch coming in before I had even decided what happened to the last one.
ALBERT.FUCKING.NEAL’S question, except now I didn’t even need Albert.
Yeah, yeah, Jennifah, that’s great. But what about…
What about the job. What about the money. What about Washington. What about the people I haven’t helped yet.
There is apparently no bottom to WHAT ABOUT.
And in a little while I will call him and tell him about last night, about the students and the laughter and the fact that I made WRONG the safest possible answer and somehow that loosened the whole room, and I will tell him about the solar conversation too, since that happened yesterday as well and even I have to admit that teaching English in Indonesia and possibly finding a way to get power into villages there is not exactly a wasted Saturday.
He will listen. He will be proud of me. He will mean it.
For about eleven seconds.
Then, somewhere before either of us has quite finished with the good part, I will hear the familiar little turn in his voice.
“Yeah, yeah, Jennifah, that’s great, but what about Washington?”
And maybe this time I will say it back.
“What about FUCKING Washington, Albert? What do you think I can actually do? I think it’s too late.”
Which is not a sentence I like saying out loud, especially to him, and certainly not one I was raised to say, but there it is anyway, sitting between us like something neither of us ordered and now have to eat.
And I know ALBERT.FUCKING.NEAL well enough to know that “I think it’s too late” will not buy me even twelve seconds of silence; he will come right back over the top of it with WHAT DO YOU MEAN TOO LATE, as though I have just tried to sneak an unsupported argument past him at the dinner table and he has caught me before I can reach for the peas, and suddenly I will be three and thirty and sixty-two all at once, expected to explain precisely when I think the country crossed whatever invisible line I am talking about, what I have done about it, what I intend to do next and, most importantly, why the hell I am sitting here telling him there is nothing left to be done when there are still people standing up.
And then, because ALBERT.FUCKING.NEAL is not above bringing in reinforcements, he will say, “Your grandmother would be pushing you out the door, Jennifah!” which is a dirty move, honestly, because once he puts my grandmother in the room I am no longer arguing with one eighty-six-year-old man on the phone, I have generations of Neals at my back apparently wondering why I am still standing in the kitchen talking about how hopeless everything is instead of putting on my fucking BOOTS.
And the worst part is, I know exactly what he means.
There are still people standing up.
So maybe the answer to WHAT ABOUT FUCKING WASHINGTON is that I am out the door, Albert. I have been out the door. The BOOTS are on. I just keep getting waylaid by the actual world before I ever make it to Washington: a missing man, a room full of students, somebody sleeping outside, a village without power, a person who needs me to stay five more minutes.
I keep stopping. I keep showing up. I keep moving.
Maybe that is not the route you had in mind for me, and maybe it is not the route I had in mind either.
Maybe I am taking the long way around, Albert.
But I am already out the fucking door.
