6 Mondays

Think of it as six Mondays, she says, poetically.

I stand there, in the door of her office, jacked up on chocolate, a Rorschach milk stain on my pilled sweater, admiring my friend’s sense of style and poise. I know she’d smartly snatch up this opportunity in a heartbeat because she loves the heat and the world and the “what ifs” and the “everything” and is all about yes.

Six Mondays, I repeat, like a third grader.

She smiles, with genuine patience. She has her own dreams, too, but she makes room in her head for mine. These are the souls we need to cherish, to canonize.

She’s talking, of course, about the 6-week gig in the Persian Gulf and is gently offering me mental strategies for how best to deal with the absence from E and the dog and the man I met at the yard sale. Because we both know I have to go.

Those people over there hate women, the man at the gym warned. He’s a personal trainer, and part time motivational speaker. I like him, and his cheerful banter, but his message pushes me to go Where They Hate Women.

I would go back, said my student, the outstanding one, the shy man who served in Iraq and Kuwait and now has a baby girl the same age as E but still gets A's. You can’t just buy something at the market, you know. You have to sit down and have tea first, he told me, almost dreamily. The people are so hospitable. I hope you get to go.

I’ve signed and faxed the documents, turned down other grants to Hawaii and elsewhere after lengthy discussions with the Engineer, but I have nevertheless been oscillating, like a rattling, old metal fan in Tucson’s sultry summer heat.

My friend should really kick me to the curb, but she endures this indecision, and rather than slam the door in my face, she buys me a present. A green, flowing tunic.

The boy smiles now. A lot. Sometimes, at home, as I shoot off e-mails to students, I glance down and see him staring up at me from his boppy perch, beaming, hands clasped like Mr. Burns, snarl-laughing, body gyrating with bliss and innocence. I give him the universal “shhhhh” sign, because by now I know it makes him smile wider, defiantly, disarmingly.

I am dangerously lucky.