Escape

You escaped today, walked out on the laundry moldering in the washing machine and the egg-encrusted dishes in the loaded dishwasher.

Instead, you’re driving out of your suburb that, yes, is such a great place to raise a kid, but sometimes you just miss a little grit, a little novelty, some thread of your old life where you were free to walk out on a street and be surprised.

So you’re driving away, not to the school where you’re supposed to be volunteering, but heading over the bridge and strolling down Clement Street. You stop in the Goodwill, buy a sweater and a basket, get your dim-sum, sit on the bench to eat it, hanging with the Asian teenagers talking loud on their cell phones, yelling swear words, trying them on.

Now they’re singing songs they know all the words to and you try to remember when’s the last time you learned the words of a song — and you’re not counting la-la-la-la-Elmo’s World lyrics that circle in your head whether you like it or not.

“I ate hell-ish today,” the one girl is saying. “That’s why I got fat.”

“You kissed her on the lips? How could you? Are you going out with her?”

“For three days I did. I know she’s fat, but I’m not shallow.”

Smelling waffles and trash and somebody’s cigarette, you remember that feeling of anything is possible.

There’s the bright green cabbage and broccoli, yellow and red apples at the stand and the Indian girl’s long black hair swinging wide for the boys, speaking in their sing-song lilt.

All the kids are talking and texting and the pigeons are scratching and you’re in the City! Now you can go home, make another lunch, host another play date so your son’s eight-year-old freckled face won’t crumple, forlorn and dejected, saying, “I’m b-o-r-e-d.”

You’ll make sure he has a buddy and do all those Good Mom things you know how to do and you can even refrain from saying, “Yeah, tell me about it,” because today you flew the coop.

By Mary Beth McClure-Marra