The Stick

The stick was stuck on my windshield, lodged between the wiper blade and the glass. I kept reminding myself to pull it off but each time my kids and I got out of the car I'd forget. The stick was about eight inches long with three small branches fanning out at the top like a claw.

Every time I got back into the car there it was. After repeatedly failing to remove it, the stick added a bit of humor to my otherwise mundane time spent in the car. I wondered how long it might stay, while at the same time making a mental note to take it off the windshield. No one else ever noticed it. So it stayed there. Stuck.

A week or more went by. I couldn't believe that I actually forgot to remove it, again and again! My windshield was dirty from the winter weather. One day I turned on the wipers and sprayed the windshield. One of the wipers moved the stick up, across, and then down, back into its spot on the windshield. I laughed at my disappointment with the prospect of losing the stick. It stayed on the car for a few more days, but inevitably when I put the wipers on again, it was airborne, and landed on a side street in Medford. I was a bit sad to see it go.

I couldn't help making analogies. The stick was the metaphor for my neglected laundry, the email I didn't reply to for months, the phone call I didn't answer because I didn't have time to talk, repeating 'Just a minute' to my kids way too many times when they wanted my attention, and being sucked into a colorful computer screen after telling myself I needed to get off in a couple of minutes. The stick generally represented my neglect to follow through with small tasks because so many other small things seemed to take precidence. My brain had become unable to remember tiny details like taking a stick off of the windshield.

I am always trying to do too many things at once. I regularly hear requests like this, "Mom, will you bring me two slices of bread with butter and cinnamon with the crusts cut off?" Simultaneously I hear, "I want some honey nut cheerios with no milk in the white bowl that looks like a cloud." Seriously? I joke with Conor and Megan, explaining to them that I am NOT an octopus. After all, if I were, I would have reached outside with one of my eight arms and snatched the stick the first time I saw it!