​There is nothing sexy about unbuttered toast. 

It sat in front of me, a single piece, sliced diagonally on the plate. A very small cobalt blue plate. With a glass of water in a lovely wine glass. It was as though serving this poor substitute for a decadent drip of a buttered biscuit on attractive tableware, would make up for it’s complete lack of luster.

The toast looked like I felt. Flaky, dry, as though I would disintegrate when touched. I was practically parched for anything that might have some taste. But this cardboard looking imitation appeared to have been sitting out too long in a desert sun. 

​“Why do you even bother writing?”

It wasn’t the question itself, but rather the insolent way she said it. As though writing was a waste of time. No, wait. That’s not quite it.

As though ME writing was a waste of time.
She was rather nasty the way she asked it, but, for some reason, I still felt compelled to answer.

“I write for myself,” I replied.

She sneered. Looked like she was going burst out in laughter at the response. “For yourself? Hardly.” She halfway rolled her eyes. “If you were truly writing for yourself, why would you even bother to put it on a public website where anyone could see it?”

​I was an essential worker. At least, for several weeks, at the beginning of the pandemic. Just before the mask mandate came down, after losing everything I had built up for my own business, I found a job at the local CVS up the street. Stores like CVS remained open, supposedly complying with strict levels of cleanliness (which translated to a dirty store and occasionally spraying fumes of lysol at the register). And my job was deemed “necessary” - by me because I had just lost everything. By society because no matter what, people need toilet paper.

If we could get it, that is. The world was having a run on toilet paper even though COVID was not a stomach virus.

It was not an ideal position. Within a day of being hired, multiple “supervisors” were texting my personal number offering to “walk me” to work since they all knew where I lived up the street. Apparently, it was “okay” for them to take down the personal details of a “hot girl” (their words not mine) since they were in positions of authority. It felt sketch to say the least. But I was desperate for work, and tried to shrug it off. I also refused their offers of walking me anywhere. Several tried to be insistent, so I generally ran out the door as fast as I could after my shift.

​I woke excited that day. It was one of the rare moments that I was allowed to be at a community pool “alone” with friends. I felt grownup - after all, I was a preteen, a double digit member of the community. At 11, I was having the coolest hangout ever - an “unsupervised” girls’ day.

Now there were plenty of adults nearby, lounging on crappy plastic chairs. My friend’s mom, who drove us, was herself sitting under the shade with a few parents. All sipping from plastic bottles and keeping an eye on the kids in the wading pool. Admonished to put on our tanning lotion, and keep out of trouble, we “big kids” were set free to chill in the deeper waters.

​I was standing in the woods admiring the light filtering through the leaves, when it hit me. I hadn’t seen a trail marker in quite some time. I turned slowly around in a circle, and suddenly EVERY direction looked like a possibility. Where was a sign when you needed it?

Signs are funny things. We talk about them a lot in society. We ask for a sign that we are doing the right thing. We ask for a sign on which direction to take in life. We ask for a sign as to whether or not we should trust someone. We ask and ask and ask.

Oddly enough for all this asking, it turns we often don’t listen when we receive the requested sign. Especially not when the signs come from our own bodies. Instead we wait and wait and wait for an outside force to give us the information we innately already know.