about face

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sometimes
leanne comes around the corner
and sometimes i come into a room and…

someone is robbing our house,
the contractor just walked out of our bathroom,
i have a new roommate who moved in
without asking.

i don’t recognize her.
my own wife.

——-

in college i shared a dorm with adrian.
adrian, the year before college started,
was hit by a drunk driver while in his vw bug.

the car rolled over on his arm
and exploded.

and adrian was trapped inside.
half of his face was burned off, his neck, his ear,
all melted off.

i was done looking at him almost immediately.
and i used to go with him everywhere.
what i never got done with was watching others
watch him.

it was a new life for him. as college is for everyone.
when you can reinvent yourself
because nobody knows who came before the you
you choose to show.

————-

and i wonder what i must be like for leanne,
to walk by the mirror and not recognize herself
from time to time.

to have something change your look
for you.

a week ago we stopped by our favorite ethiopian restaurant with kevin and carley,
who had taken lydia out for dinner (bless them),
and the owner, who knows us and coddles lydia and always gives us hugs,
when leanne went to hug her,
said “do i know you?”

———–

i know that a face
is just a face.
that it’s not everything,
and hardly anything
at all.

but it’s something…
something immediate and present and unavoidable,
a chunk of rock, the sun, a wall.

that not being recognized by your face
hurts in a subterranian sort of way.

————-

nobody at school knew what adrian looked like before the accident.
he couldn’t be unrecognized if he tried.
but i wonder what it was like when he went home for break.

we never talked about that.

i do remember my first halloween with him,
how he showed up to a party dressed like freddy krueger
and how all the girls who didn’t know him
kept coming up and brushing their hands over his face.

it looks so real, they said.

and he’d just laugh.

——————-

lee’s co-worker scott shaved his head.
our brother-in-law eric shaved his head too.
even our live-in oncologist/neighbor ari did it.
then our 10 year old neighbor, kayleigh, cut off most of her long brown hair.
and then noah shaved his head:

noah is 6.
noah’s father is about to go in for yet another in a far-too-long line of heart surgeries.
every time noah comes over, we make something in the kitchen.
something that no one makes, like ketchup from scratch, or bubble gum from scratch,
but yesterday we made real pretzels and fresh mustard.

here is the letter i wrote him:

noah,
it was so, so, so good to see you yesterday. i packed some extra
pretzels in the bag for you and enough so that your dad can get all the
homemade pretzel strength he needs for his surgery this week.

pretzels make all the difference.

and i just want to say something again that i said to you yesterday, which
is that not only are you funny and cool and wacky and crazy and good, you’re
compassionate - that means that you think about how other people feel.

and that’s something that kids don’t usually do. and to tell you the truth,
that’s something that a lot of adults don’t even do.

what you did for leanne in shaving off your hair made her feel less alone.
what a tremendous gift to give, noah. making her feel less alone.

you’re an amazing friend.

really.

i hope that in coming over and spending time with us, maybe you feel less
alone too. you and i, we both have someone we love in our house who doesn’t
feel so good. so in that way, we’re brothers. we’re trying to stay strong
while we have to watch the people we love be sick.
and that’s a hard place to be.

never alone.

love,

danny

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