Five fucking thirty in the morning

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Thanks for joining me here at an hour of the morning where cursing is practically de fucking rigueur.

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Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash

The moment I stepped out of my apartment building at five fucking thirty in the morning, I knew I had made a mistake. Probably many of them.

My fleece over my long sleeve shirt wasn’t warm enough. I didn’t have my camera. It was five fucking thirty in the morning. Still pitch black. No birds, but already some traffic.

Despite all this, I knew that as soon as I dropped off the guy I’d been seeing — which is the only reason I’d ever be up at this hour, for some reason I can’t get up at 7 am on my own to save my life but for someone *else’s* job I can spring out of bed at 4:30 am like like some kind of demented coffee-making cartoon sparkle pony, I blame the patriarchy — I wouldn’t go home to take a nap and wake up again at a reasonable hour like a reasonable person. I’d drive on the infamous DC beltway, over a bridge, out to Huntley Meadows in Virginia, and then fight my way back into DC in rush hour traffic like every other DC drone.

I was the first person at Huntley Meadows, unless you counted the minivan parked in the farthest corner of the lot. It was near the port-o-potties, and I assumed it was someone’s temporary living quarters, and they were not there for the park.

I am never the first person anywhere.

I will say this about my soon-to-be-ex-husband: his anxiety reined in my laxness. If we didn’t show up early, as he preferred, we tended to show up on time. Without the constraint of the rising tension in the house, I can go minutes, even hours, just thinking thoughts, just staring at the wall, considering things. This does not make for prompt arrivals.

But now, due, I guess, however obliquely, to another man, here I was, early again. Extravagantly early.

Just a few minutes after me, another minivan pulled up. The people from the new minivan passed me on the walk to the marsh — a lesbian couple and their three elementary school-aged kids. The kids hated me immediately. They realized that, without me, they’d have the whole place to themselves. I ruined everything.

One of the women made the mistake of thinking I was an expert in something. “What should we be looking for?” she asked. I think it was because I had stopped to stare at something, probably a clump of mud, half wondering if it might be a toad but really just considering things, just thinking. I guess anyone who spent that much time staring at a clump of mud was either crazy or knew something she didn’t, and she was willing to be generous. “What should we be looking for?”

I smiled, explained that I didn’t really know anything either. I was up early, dropping someone off — I made it sound like an airport drop-off, I don’t know why — and thought to come out here for the sunrise. “We’ve been here a lot before but never for sunrise,” the woman said. 

“Me too,” I said. We knew exactly as much as the other which was: not much.

I walked ahead, and that’s when I saw it: a clump of mud with fur.

And it was moving.

I know there’s a nutria that lives near the bridge of this park. Now, there’s nothing wrong with nutria. Big rats have their place. But there’s a difference between being able to call out “Look! Nutria! It’s a big rat!” and “Look! A beaver!”

I split the difference, pointing to the moving mud clump and saying, “Look! I think … it’s maybe a beaver?” 

The kids were not excited, they did not run over to take a look. Maybe it was cold. Maybe they didn’t get enough breakfast. Maybe they just really, really hated me. They stayed clumped together on the far part of the boardwalk. “Yep, we see,” one of the parents called out. “Thanks!”

A friend tells me that she almost always sees the beavers when she goes to Huntley Meadows but, somehow, I’ve missed them. Well, I saw them once, in the distance, at dusk, little more than dark knobs rising slightly above the water. Could’ve been driftwood if they hadn’t been headed, slowly but steadily, towards the dam. 

This time, though, I saw her — or him, I guess — the whole deal, swimming, crossing her dam.

Listen, I make mistakes, y’all. I ruin things on the regular.

Even though it was maybe a helpful life lesson for them in sharing spaces blah blah blah I’m kinda sorry those kids didn’t get the place to themselves.

I’m definitely sorry that I’m late to everything unless, apparently, there’s a guy in my life. I forget my camera, I forget an extra layer, I zone out, I watch the clumps of mud and all the wrong things at all the wrong times until every once in a while, there’s a bit of grace, and it’s a beaver.

I guess I’ll keep going, because every once in a while, despite every attempt on my part to be wrong in every which way, it’s a beaver.