On the Merritt

ON THE MERRIT

I kiss the silver beak of the heron pin I bought at some vintage shop in Allston the day before I left. The outside of the windowless shop read: We’re open. Aren’t you curious? Dad and I are driving south for what must be my twentieth time this summer, but this time it’s different. This time all of my things are stored away, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. This time, I have a one-way ticket for a flight booked on Cheap-O-Air.com, and I’m to board, lift off, layover, dodge my way through Charles de Gaulle with two suitcases, find the train, find my mom, find my house down deep in the south of France.

Dad tells me about his post-grad-ness, trying to soothe my half-spoken anxiety. He tells me about his countless dead end interviews, the wandering, his pinstripe bellbottoms and lime green sports coat somehow incapable of landing him a gig teaching art. What kind of world? He tells me about his trips across the country, the welfare, how he couldn’t even land a job reading gas meters. Why? I ask, How? He answers: because I was supposed to be here. His move to Virginia, then North Carolina, he says, were the first chapters, the beginning of an epic.

I keep rubbing the small, breakable heron between my fingers, fifteen minutes from JFK. I have no idea what I’m doing, but neither did he. The beginning of an epic.