Poet Grapples With Eight Million Black Friday Emails While Visiting The Hospital
This is actually not an essay about consumerism, but attention.
The TV in the hospital cafeteria is playing the news the day before Thanksgiving. They’re interviewing the president of Mall of America before the biggest shopping day of the year, and she is expressing how exciting this season is after multiple years of restrictions - they’ve pulled out all the stops, with the balconies behind her draped in gold ribbons, giant nutcracker figurines with their rectangular smiles standing in a marching line over her shoulder. She talks about all the new programming for the holidays - carollers, greeters, elves all wandering the halls, about Santa’s new velvet suit stitched with toys on the hem, how they built his greeting place to look like a rustic cabin in the woods. The news segment cuts to charts and graphs on projected profits, displays popular toys, predicts how many shoppers will head out to the stores. If you didn’t know the subject matter, you’d think they were reporting on election day, except those polls don’t draw in these kinds of numbers. I take note of the cynicism that follows that thought. I try to tuck it away.
My mom has been too nervous to eat anything substantial all week. She is on a strict diet of mint tea and snickerdoodle cookies (the kind with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top). Sometimes she accepts a slice of banana bread from Starbucks, a bite or two of scrambled eggs. I butter a piece of toast with the most care and devotion that I’ve put into anything on the off-chance she might want a bite. I can’t fix anything about what’s brought us here, but I can make breakfast. I can clean out the fridge. I can fold towels and linens as neatly as I’ve ever folded anything. I can buy peonies for the house even though we’re barely there, just to have something beautiful to look at. It’s these tiny indulgences that soften the blow of our reality.
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