Week 11

Brick Township, New Jersey

Brick was (and continues to be, to my disappointment) a large central Jersey town of developing stores and retirement villages and malls and gas stations. Whenever my mother took me to the high school football games while I was in elementary school (attending a private Catholic school, not the public school we lived nearby), I was always told Brick Township was the guys we were playing against, the guys we booed. 

It didn’t make sense to me, though, why I went to a school in Brick when they were the bad guys. My mother said it was because they had better schools, but our football team was the best.

My school was a tiny church near the highway (a large oak fence blocked the playground from the small field that led to the road) that expanded itself with trailers parked in the wide expanse of parking lot. I remember the lame chain link fence and the open space that blocked us from the Stop N Shop next door.

It was quiet, surrounded by pines, and when I was in first grade, adjusting my navy skirt and my white tights, I knew it was a great place for me: not too hot, not too cold, just there and just right.

March 30, 11:20 a.m.

I am sorely disappointed by the weather, by the way it rained heavily yesterday (a sure indication of spring) to the way I woke up to find it had snowed again. I don’t mean to be redundant every week, but I’m fed up.

This week my car threw on the Check Engine light, and I had to bring it into the Toyota Service Center and then rely on their shuttle service to get to and from m internship. The man who drove the shuttle was nice and chatted with me while we were alone; whenever someone else came in to be transported around, he’d always bring up how horrible of the winter this was, how last year it wasn’t this bad.

As I sit in Mark’s broken-down Rabbit, Mark screws away and pulls at various parts of the engine. The white hood is up, but all I can see are his Pep Boy jacket and, if he bends down far enough, his nose.

There are more cars outside passing us by, more people outside than I expected. You’d think they’d be as fed up as I am and boycott the outside.

The wind blows at that awful slow winter pace; every gust of wind is painful when it hits you. I see Mark’s pale hands every now and again.

As I told Mark when we woke up today and he said the ground was covered in snow, I’m sick of this bullshit.

There are only little hints of snow on the ground now, the kind that looks like dusting of sugar on dead yellow grass and dead brown leaves.

Mark bought a bag of baby onions, yellow and purple, almost three days ago. I pointed out to him as he got the sheer grocery bad that two of them in the bucket had started sprouting green on top of the bulbs. He said it didn’t matter to him.

When he went to cook with them the next day, the greens had shot up centimeters. And last night, he put them in soil, and this morning, they are almost an inch now. When I touched them, they feel solid, hard, “like rock,” Mark said.

A jogger passes by. I simultaneously pity him for needing to exercise in this weather and label him as a moron for needing to exercise in this weather.

Another jogger goes by. He is not as hunched over as the other guy, but I still think he, too, is a moron.

Now that the wind has settled for a bit, I can hear birds chirp (and Mark mimic them). They sound so distant, so high up in the trees, and so far away. I wonder how cold it is for them, how hard they have to hang on in their nests when the wind rocks the slimmer branches. Do they curl up into what they know and ride out the bad weather, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute? It sounds miserable to me.

I’m sure Mark would say something about how they react differently to such weather, being constantly exposed to it; they can’t stay curled up forever because they have to feed and sing and move for warmth, too.

I remember during first grade an Asian traveling performing ground come to my school and dance in our gym. We all sat on the floor and watched the ladies shuffle gracefully around in their kimonos and wave beautiful paper fans. I remember one lady telling us how she loved mimicking bird movement, how she had to move her whole body to see, not her head. Most birds don’t have necks and can’t turn their head to the side to see like we can, she said, so they have to move their whole body.

I don’t remember why I remember that part, exactly, but it seemed important at the time and still in a sense does.