Nathan and I were at Costco just to get hot chips and soda. Of course we always get pizza on the way out or go over to panda, because this is exciting, these times we're living in.
On the way out there's the guy selling 7 thousand dollar massage chairs. Nathan's like aww, they're all folded up it looks like you can't try them out (we always try them out) and the guy says no, you can try them out! He starts leveling one out like the landing gear on the mars rover. Also he seems to be wearing a dark blue tuxedo jacket. I'm guessing he was the best man at a wedding that probably didn't work out and now he just wears the jacket to sell a little bit of kindness to sore and weary people.
"Which one is the best one," says Nathan with the scraggly curly hair and the moustache he's trying to grow in and which his sister has repeatedly texted no make him stop
"You should give it to her," Nathan says and for a second I think wait
The white noise costco swirling around us
"This is the best one," the tuxedo guy says, aiming us at the massage chair the size of a small pick up truck.
"You should give it to her," Nathan's aiming me with his voice, this little boy who showed up from my stomach, who did everything with me, every minute of the day, for probably 15 years straight and alot of it included standing near firetrucks with flowered overalls on. Now he's huge and
in this vast white high ceilinged costco that my dad doesn't like going to because it's too big and scary, there's this person I know well and he's taking the shitty chair so I can have the good one and I didn't even know there was a way to feel better about Nathan or surprised
but I am in the rocket chair and he's two chairs over in only the FOUR thousand dollar massage chair and we go on our ride.
The tuxedo guy is standing over us and he does not stop talking. He has alot to say, and most of it is about how great he is which seems like a speech that is keeping him alive so we just sit there because our hands are actually trapped in the chairs being squeezed so there's no way we could get out anyway.
I keep thinking about Nathan, my little boy. What just happened? When somebody does something kind for you, for no reason, there's no way to respond. You feel sort of dumbfounded like when you're looking at Niagara Falls. It's so much bigger than you, and it's incredible and it never ends it just keeps dumping water from god knows where (I guess Canada is like DROWNING). There's no conversation after Niagara Falls. You stare and then just walk away and feel stupid.
So after we get out of the chairs feeling like we have new backs, we keep wandering in our life, this random Wednesday night path, checking out, getting food, loading the car, talking about dumb stuff, having an every day.
But in there in that car loaded with hot chips on the road back to our cave our house, the place we are from the road is lined with flowers because that's my heart all lined up alongside the road cheering us on and it was only five or six words that he said but I think that's what it feels like when someone loves you
