Blog 1 - The day starts with...

The day starts with leaning my still creaking body out the window to light my first cigarette of the morning, my mug of coffee hesitating on my lips as I watch the two women below me argue. One woman flails her arms as the other stands with almost statuesque posture, holding back tears. I awoke this morning to a dull thud, and due to the stream of water presently flowing from a crack in the side of the building on the 2nd floor, I guess (correctly) that yet another broken water pipe had been the catalyst for their public row. The heavy rain earlier must have overwhelmed the old Foxberry.

I often hear people in the elevator complaining about how disgusting and mismanaged our building is, and it's hard to stifle my reflexive chuckle. I grew up on the South Side of this town, in a one-room trailer with my mom and three brothers, sharing a "bed" with at least one other person for 17 years of my life. That was the year that my father came back into my life, urging me to train at the health clinic in town, and paying for this isolated apartment year round. The cigarette smoke curls to graze my eyes, giving me an excuse to let a tear roll down my cheek. It hurts to think about my family left to their own devices, but I know that my work here is the only way to truly help them.

I hear Dorothy's distinctive voice from a few floors down and call out to her from above. 

Her head pops out of the open window while I lay out a plan for us to grab some coffee and biscuits from the diner. Maybe Megan can come too.

She agrees and as I go to shower I think about the possibilities of the day, the interactions bound to occur, and the inevitable and recurring pattern of my life at this point. It may sound morbid, but the death of Mr. Evans has been the only thing grounding me in everyday life recently. Everyone speculating and gossiping, spinning wild stories from a sweater they saw him wear one Sunday; it gives me something else to focus on besides myself. Now that the drama of the incident has mostly subsided, the familiar, calming sense of complacency washes over me as I wait for the water to as well. But it never does. Because the broken pipe downstairs has reduced the water pressure to droplets at a time. Fantastic.