Scarf weather update: the orange-and-brown plaid my aunt gave me, the one that makes me look like a pumpkin spice candle. There’s fog on the hills this morning, sitting in the valley like it pulled up a chair. Happy Halloween.
The café has a paper skeleton taped to the pastry case with a sign that says “Too Many Scones.” I bought one out of respect for his sacrifice.
I try to keep my phone face-down on mornings like this. Today I lost that fight before my latte cooled. I scrolled through the election headlines, and somewhere around the third sip I noticed I’d been reading the same kind of thing for weeks. A lot of it sounded like a group chat I’d want to leave. Nicknames. Jokes about someone’s weight, someone’s age, someone’s wife. My nephew would lose his tablet for that kind of talk, and he’s eleven.
I kept looking for the part where somebody explained what happens to gas prices, or groceries, or the doctor bill sitting on my counter under a magnet shaped like a lemon. Mostly I found more nicknames.
Then I’d hit a stretch of other candidates in other towns, and they sounded tired in a way I recognized, like the church volunteer six hours into the bake sale. They kept saying the same handful of things in different accents: let’s make the clinic affordable, let’s fix the bridge, let’s let kids go to college without a mortgage attached, let’s set another place at the table for the family that moved in down the street. You can argue with them about how to pay for it. I’d love to hear that argument. Grown-ups have that kind over coffee all the time.
Two women at the next table were talking about it, and one said she just couldn’t decide. I wanted to turn around and ask which part felt hard. I didn’t. I’m not built for that, and her toddler had a cake pop, and I value this scarf.
So I did what I do. I flipped over my receipt and drew a line down the middle. On one side I wrote what I’d heard people promise to build. On the other I wrote the insults. The insult side ran out of room first.
When I was little, the kids on our street built a treehouse. We had a stack of boards, a coffee can of bent nails, and one very patient dad with a level. One boy didn’t want to help, so he spent the afternoon throwing pinecones at us and calling it a dumb treehouse. By supper we had a floor. He had a pile of pinecones.
We didn’t hold a vote on which of them to follow.
I kept turning it over on my walk home, stepping around the wet leaves. Maybe the pinecone kid is funnier on a small screen. Maybe a mean joke travels faster than a plan for a bridge, the way a cold gets around the office quicker than a casserole recipe. Maybe some folks have been handed blueprints that stayed blueprints, and the pinecone thrower at least seems honest about what he’s doing.
I understand being let down. I’ve had a contractor or two disappoint me. I didn’t fire the contractor and hire a vandal.
Tuesday I’ll wear the green scarf, the good one, and stand in line at the polling place with a thermos. I’m going to pick the people who showed up carrying boards.
Small joys are big deals. A floor under your feet is one of them.
Stay kind, stay caffeinated, and save me a scone.
