I’ve been considering taking up smoking. I’ve read all the brochures. Seen the commercials with the poor lady talking through the hole in her neck. Watched my mother struggle to quit by keeping a full carton among the junk on top of our avocado colored fridge. Frisbees, newspapers, a flyswatter and that shiny white and green box with gold foil. For months until finally, on a Saturday, my dad threw them out with the garbage. I get it. Don’t send me articles. But I’m still considering it. I need something. A little flash that fixes. A crutch. A helper. I am struggling. Are you? Have you thought about buying a carton on the way home. Sitting outside in a lawn chair, putting on some good music and just smoking? For hours. And not even caring what it’s doing to your lungs? If you have come sit by me. I feel you. Life seems hard. Harder than usual. My sisters are sick. Both of them. And those are just the two born with my last name. I have other sisters struggling too. The sisters it took me a minute to find. The ones I chose. Dads are dying. Moms already have. Kids are in trouble. Jobs have disappeared. Eggs are five bucks a carton. It’s a lot. A big lot. And I don’t know what to do. How to help. How to fix anything. So I find myself thinking about cigarettes. Wishing for a five minute trip away from everything. Wishing. But not acting. Every day I drive right by the store I know sells cigarettes. I never find a parking place and walk in and ask the girl named Myra to give me a carton. Sigh. I guess it’s the good Lord keeping me from myself. A cigarette wouldn’t solve anything. Would definitely cause new problems. I talk to him about them though. I tell him how deeply everything hurts right now and I ask for strength to not solve any of these problems by choosing new problems. And it’s hard. That path doesn’t really offer any immediate relief. It causes me to stay in this moment I’m not enjoying. It hurts. Makes me wish my mom was still here. I’d like to ask her if when she was a young mom with five kids under eight if those moments with a cigarette helped. Did those puffs give her the self possession to go back and glue things to a paper and cook dinner and greet my dad with a smile. I really don’t know. I know I hated going to school smelling like smoke. I know I hated going into the store to ask for the cigarettes. I know I still remember her and my dad scrounging for a mix of coins and crumpled dollar bills to buy them. But, I don’t know if they were worth it. Don’t get me wrong. If I could light a cigarette and my sister’s cancer would disappear I’d have already done it. If a cigarette could bring back my sweet friend’s folks I’d be asking for a light from anyone who would listen. But, they won’t. So I don’t. But I want to. I want a flash that fixes. Not this experience of life that is both tragic and magic and getting harder for this aging girl to take.