Pamela ~

It is impossible to work when she is here.

It is impossible to get any work done when Pamela is here. She cleans my house that I clean the day before because, according to my mom, this is the right thing to do. It is wrong to expect someone to do the things you should do yourself. You should also be ashamed of yourself to live in a dirty house. The day Pamela came into my life was, without hyperbole, the best day of my life because without her the house would be the exact visual representation of my messy mind.

It is impossible to get any work done when Pamela is here. There are many topics we must catch each other up on. She has three teenage daughters. Right there is a whole morning of parsing the absurd, harrowing beauty of being a 13, 16, and 18 year old girl. I tell her about my two (former rambunctious teenage) sons. They’re good men but complicated, so a lot to dissect there, too. After that there’s our personal news: she is learning how to drive a car because she doesn’t want to rely on her husband anymore; I have yet another injury (a screwed up right hand I’m not supposed to use—as in typing—for at least four weeks) that she has a cure for; she shares photos of a family gathering, or a flowering plant, or fantastical cakes her friend makes; I am crazy searching for several important objects such as the car keys and the dog’s allergy medicine which is why he’s wheezing. Could this be an early sign of Alzheimer? Of course not, Pamela says. Then I make us coffee and wipe down the stove while she reorganizes the refrigerator the way sensible people would. I dust, she vacuums, we pick up rugs and rearrange furniture. I yell at her to get down from the ladder where she’s cleaning the windows. Then help her clean the windows.

My clean stove.

It is impossible to get any work done when Pamela is here.

The work I was struggling to do centers on the day my husband and I were in Tangier. It was November, unreasonably cold, and we hadn’t quite recovered from the Spanish ferry that almost capsized in the wild Mediterranean Sea. Bakkar latched on to us on the docks. He might have been in his late twenties or early sixties: youthful energy coupled with a weathered face. Handsome if his lips weren’t so grimly set. He dressed in dark trousers and a loose white shirt covered by a red wool jacket against the cold. He wore socks with his sandals. He wasn’t engaging or unfriendly. His English was perfect.

Over four days the story I’ve been working on refused to gracefully reach the point of why anyone would want to read about the day in Tangier. When Pamela arrived all I had was this overwrought stuff:

An old man dressed in a long white robe sat on a blue stool before the marketplace. He was surrounded by sacks displaying herbs and spices. The man’s long white robe and beard, the whitewashed wall behind him that framed the marketplace’s entrance, the breakout appearance of the sun in the blue sky cast in brilliant tones the array of reds and yellows, browns and greens brimming from the white sacks. The commingling of their scents knocked me into a longing stupor.

Herbs and spices for sale in Tangier’s Grand Socco market

The nearest sack to me overflowed with freshly cut lavender. I reached down and brushed my hand through the soft stalks the way I also did when lavender was near. A few blooms fell into my palm and I cupped my hands to breath in their fragrance.

The old man began to scream, jumped up, and waved his hands violently toward me. My husband pulled me back. Bakkar stepped in front of the man who continued to scream, continued to throw his arms toward me. He calmed the man enough that he sat down again. Bakkar shoved us forward into a shadowed corner of the market.

“Never do that,” Bakkar snapped.

I was ashamed and confused about what I did to cause such an emotional scuffle. I said I’d go back and apologize. I said I would buy all his lavender.

Bakkar snapped, “NO.”

He led us through the market almost in a trot. Upon reaching a crowded square he told us our tour of Tangier was finished.

We paid him his fee and watched him go away and soon we were lost in narrow alleys and twisting streets, surrounded by the ravishing beauty of everyone except us going about their daily chores of carrying bread dough to communal ovens and sifting through pans of beans and beads and lighting charcoal grills and unlatching old wooden doors that opened onto tiled courtyards with cool fountains….

I thought there should be more to this story but there isn’t. Instead, I spent the day with Pamela.