Ask me if I care that I just found out yesterday that I’m a socialist! Oh the horror of it all! I actually believe in healthcare reform…!
Ask me if I care that I was a few minutes late for work today – on a beautiful, sunny spring day.
Ask me if I care that I noticed all the tree branches outside our apartment have green buds on them – the leaves are returning.
Ask me if I care that I’ve got five jobs pending in the cue right now at work – and two papers to write and a thesis due in exactly one month.
Ask me if I care that I stayed up way too late the other night for the Sunday night jam and I only got four hours of sleep, but the live music was amazing and rhythmic and drew me right in so I just couldn’t leave.
Ask me if I care who wins American Idol this year.
Ask me if I care that I almost accidentally locked the cat in the linen closet this morning when I shut the open door. Good thing he started meowing.
Ask me if I care that on top of everything else I’ve gotta do, one of the attorneys just randomly called and asked me set up a “simple” timeline for her to fill in monthly.
Ask me if I care what music is playing on the radio right now – ZZ Top’s Tush!!!! hahaha…
Ask me if I care that the radio station just played Lady Madonna mixed with Hey Bulldog…at first, I thought – what the heck…
Ask me if I care that I always feel as if I must be there for everyone all the time – and that I’m tired, very tired…
Ask me if I care that I didn’t get to write my creative caffeine first thing this morning as I’d planned because I awoke way too late and it was all I could do to get out the door with my daughter this morning…but I had to stop and stare the branches of the trees with all the green buds and breath the orange blossom smell into my nostrils before I headed down the steps into my car for the mad dash to Megan’s school and then to work.
Ask me if I care that my mother would have been thrilled that I’m getting my master’s degree in six weeks and I can still hear her deep, dramatic voice say, “It’s about damned time Mary!”
Ask me if I care that my mother would never in a million years call me Melody, that she would be pissed off that I wasn’t using my “family” name of Mary, which is her name and my godmother’s name and apparently was my great grandmother’s name as well.
Ask me if I care that my mother was mad because I didn’t name my first daughter Mary, that I named her Melissa Marie. But she was happy when I finally had another little girl much later and named her Megan Mary.
Ask me if I care that I am not going to give back that precious wedding album from my mom and dad’s wedding on October 6, 1956 that we found amid my Dad’s things last weekend right away, that my dad and my sister will just have to wait until I’m finished with it – serves them right for having to cancel all of my writing-related plans this Saturday.
Ask me if I care whether or not I ever finish my memoir.
You always do a terrific job with these repeating phrase ones. What's so great about this piece is the way you intersperse the mundane, i.e. Tush on the radio, with the profound, i.e. what your mother would say about your degree. What's so interesting is that in a way, this is your memoir. You manage to sum up your entire life here. (Maybe you can try turning this in!)
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