Xmas 2009

BABY IN A BAR

 It was when Zahra started to throw up at the end of the Christmas morning brunch, and there wasn’t even a white Christian at the table - at least not any practicing ones - and I just kept colouring the sheet the server (I respect feminist principles, but still prefer the antiquated term ‘waitress’ - ‘server’ just sounds so god damned colonizing) - so the server had given us this sheet for the children to colour on - it was a terribly simplistic drawing of a terribly childish monster, and there were three terrible crayons included - one blue, one yellow, one red - so I kept on colouring the soon to be tri-coloured monster diligently, remembering how, as a child, I was very good at keeping within the lines, but could never seem to get that pure, even field of unmottled hue my brother and his friends could get, hard as I tried, it always looked a little cloudy, foreshadowing my love for Rothko, but never Olitski, seldom Seurat - so I keep on coloring diligently, staying within the lines, maintaining as smooth and as unmottled a surface as I possibly can, but never quite making the grade, when suddenly, in this quiet, unobtrusive way I have around minor trauma, I hear Zahra’s mother say that Zahra is throwing up, so I keep on colouring, watching, from the corners of my eyes, the projectile vomit making it’s way in every direction but mine - a small mercy for which I thank the heavenly father, whom I do not happen to fully believe in - and I pass Zahra’s brown mom some white cloth napkins, and catch a glimpse of vomit as it hits her pant leg, then falls to the carpeted floor beneath the table, and I keep on colouring, and am amazed at the efficient, quiet, and loving way in which this family manages to comfort their child through something my family would have taken their shotguns out at the first sign of any disturbance, and then, I think fondly of when Zahra’s mom remarked, only a few minutes before the puking incident, that she never wanted to be one of those women with a baby, in a bar, but now she gets it, and doesn’t mind at all, and even though we’re not in a bar, that is the precise moment when I decide to call the drawing I am colouring in, carefully, diligently, trying to stay within the lines -“For Colouring Book Monsters who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf”