The Distance I Can’t Shorten

My driver’s side door handle has been broken for weeks. I can’t get out my own side anymore, not without cutting my finger trying, so every time I park I climb across to the passenger side to get out.

I did it again yesterday outside the school, in the rain, and walked in to get my daughter.

She was crying uncontrollably. It took a few minutes to get it out of her. Her best friend had moved back to Singapore a few weeks earlier. That was the whole thing.

Her friend arrived in my daughter’s class with a thick Singaporean accent. She left with a broad Australian one, my daughter’s own accent, more or less, picked up somewhere in the years between. That’s what four years of sitting next to someone does. You don’t just become friends. You start to sound like each other.

I told her we’d go visit soon. It didn’t land. There isn’t much in my control here. I can’t shorten the distance. I can’t make her reappear in the seat next to my daughter’s. I can coordinate a video call, and that’s about the size of what I’ve got.

We got back to the car, and I climbed across again to get to my seat. She watched me do it, still crying, and for a second, I wondered if it looked as strange to her as it felt to me; her father getting into his own car through the wrong door because the right one won’t open.

I can find my own way through a broken door. I can’t find hers through this one.

Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder

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