Hand-Drawn Dreams

A metallic clang softly rang out as she held the keys against the door handle, hearing the click of the FOB she pressed her shoulder against the door and used the weight of her body to push it open. Stepping into the apartment her gaze went first to the windows, which reflected the outline of her husband, awash in the warm glow of the kitchen lights. After taking off her shoes and face mask she proceeded to the kitchen sink and counted to twenty while vigorously lathering soap between her fingers. Her husband leaned over and kissed her cheek as he scrubbed away dinner remnants from the wok.

“Mmm, it smells delicious in here. What’d you make?”

“Just an asian stir fry with chicken and noodles. Your plate is in the microwave.”

“Thanks love.”

Reprising their nightly accusal, the glowing red numbers on the kitchen stove read 8:45, and she felt guilt grow taught in her gut. Wrapping her arms around him from behind she pressed her face against his back breathing in his familiar scent, he kept scrubbing, slowly allowing his torso to give way to the hug. He permitted the pan to fall into the sink and leaned slightly backward into her, she squeezed tight and he softly said, “I know” in response to the “I love you” she mumbled into his shoulder.

As she sat down with her re-heated dinner she pulled from her purse a small, black, leather-bound notebook and a mechanical pencil. With one hand forking bite after bite into her mouth the other held open the book. Eyes engrossed in the notebook, her brain stifled the messages it was receiving from her taste buds, focusing instead on the book and the way each note initiated a replay of a recent event. She looked down as she loaded her fork with the final bite, noting a sizable slice of ginger among the vegetables and noodles.

“Ooh, there’s ginger in here? It’s really good, baby.”


From his desk on the other side of the room, he turned and looked at her, “Yeah, we had some fresh ginger so I thought I’d use it up. There’s another bowl in the fridge for you to take to work tomorrow.”

Smiling at him briefly, she turned her attention back to the notebook. With a deep sigh she looked at what was written down for tomorrow, meetings from 7:30am to 4:30pm. If the 1pm meeting ended early she’d be able to quickly heat up her lunch before the next call. Picking up her work phone she refreshed the outlook app to display twenty new emails. The first reminded her of a task left incomplete, ‘URGENT - 2nd REMINDER’. In her notebook on the page annotated with tomorrow’s date she drew a small square and wrote next to it, ‘Approve Oracle Subcontract!’. She continued through the new emails, making little boxes beside brief descriptions of actions she’d need to complete tomorrow. Before the day had even begun, it required more than one human could accomplish.

Forty minutes later, after depositing her plate and silverware in the empty dishwasher, she walked to the bathroom. Beside the hot water steaming from the shower, she stood naked, scrolling through the fifty-two unread texts on her personal phone. She read through an endearing back and forth between her mother and sister on their group chat, the last message timestamped at 6pm. They were on the east coast, she was on the west, it was too late to respond now but she’d try to remember tomorrow morning. She scrolled quickly through the memes, gifs, and emojis on the group chat with three of her girlfriends. Too tired to read it she went onto the group chat with her husband’s family, someone had gotten vaccinated and was feeling sluggish after the first dose. Without sending a single response, she put the phone down and relinquished her body to the scalding water. Sitting down on the floor of the shower she let her head fall between her knees, enjoying the heat of the pounding water as it eased the tension from her upper back and shoulders.

Sliding the shower door open, her husband stepped into the tub. Standing up, she turned to allow him to get under the water.

“Oh, bug, why do you do this? Your back is all scratched again. Doesn’t it hurt when you do that?”

He gently ran his fingers along the red lines etched into her back.

“Sorry, I guess I didn’t notice I was scratching. My skin just itches sometimes.”

He pulled her into an embrace, and as he held her, her muscles continued to relax yielding a few small tears that were quickly washed away by the flowing water. Toweled off and snuggled in bed she looked again at her phones and then set a parade of alarms starting at 6:15am.

The next day, while listening to the results of the team’s trade study on centralized software patching solutions, she flipped to the last page of her notebook. Spread across two pages was the start of a woodland scene, with a small stream winding between rocks and conifer trees. She’d heard the presentation once before when she’d helped the team prepare for today’s final presentation to the customer, so she allowed her eyes to drift from the screen to the sketch. She finished shading a boulder and then began to add bushes and wildflowers along the creek bed, all the while her ears were closely attuned to the dialogue on the conference call, ready to jump in at any point.

When the last meeting of the day ended, she filled a mug with hot water and steeped a happy tummy tea. The ginger and peppermint soothed the acid reflux that now plagued her digestive system. Flipping open the notebook, she started working off the remaining action items she’d written for today, when each was complete she checked off the box beside the item.

At 8pm she was startled out of an email induced trance by the loud brrriiiing of her desk phone. She saw her husband’s number on the caller ID.

“Hey Babe. Sorry, I lost track of time. I just need to wrap up this last thing and then I’ll head out …. Oh good, I’m glad you could go for a run …. Yeah go ahead and eat without me …. Thanks for cooking dinner, love …. okay, love you.”

The notebook reflected three more tasks to complete for the day, none of which were trivial. One included a recommendation she was expected to share with their customer the next morning at 9am. She had an idea of how she wanted to approach it, what data to gather and how to organize it … but she didn’t have time to do it properly, and she couldn’t push the meeting off without risking the customer’s dissatisfaction. Disappointed in herself, she pulled together a hurried recommendation, leveraging only the most easily accessible metrics, and dropped it in the folder for tomorrow’s discussion.

Brrriiiing. She saw it was her husband again. It was after 9pm.

“Hi! I’m so sorry! I’m coming home now!”

As she logged off, she forcefully rubbed her eyes to relieve the stinging. For the last few months at the end of the work day she had been experiencing this recurring sensation, in which her eyes watered and stung. She wondered again what was causing it; perhaps it was a result of the hand sanitizer, the glare of the computer screen, or something coming out of the air handler.

The next afternoon she unexpectedly found herself with twenty unassigned minutes. Seeking warmth, she stepped outside and sat on a bench, basking in the mid-day splendor of the Silicon Valley sun. As she did so, she noticed the resplendent redwood tree on the other side of the courtyard. Inspired, she turned to the last page of her notebook and added to the bark of the largest coniferous tree.

Her work phone vibrated, looking down she saw a text from her boss. Shit. She’d forgotten about her boss’ last minute request for a status report this afternoon. The brief would be circumcised four times as it made its way up the leadership chain, eventually resulting in a 30 second report for the CEO indicating whether or not program performance was trending positively. Shit. Her throat caught, her chest tightened, her eyes made their familiar bristle. She took a deep breath and exhaled, but the lump in her throat grew, and as it grew it forced tears out from her reluctant eyes. One tear escaped the swath of her hand and slid down her cheek directly onto the pencil-drawn conifer, as it hit the branches of the tree the needles turned from their lifeless gray to the vibrant green of a dollar bill.

A wind gust broke her reverie, cold air seeped through her sweater. She hugged her arms inward and looked up from the notebook, her eyes catching the redwood. Its branches swayed in the breeze, shaking loose needles that fell to the ground. She looked back to the notebook and saw her hand-drawn conifer oscillate left and right across the page, it’s own needles falling soundlessly to the woodland floor. The ground beneath her conifer filled with small mounds of green as the branches became barren. Something seemed to unfurl upon the ground, she drew her face near the page and saw that the needles, piled up like leaves in the fall, were opening to reveal tiny likenesses of Benjamin Franklin.

Rubbing her eyes, she looked up across the stretch of concrete to the redwood. Beneath it were mounds of green, it’s branches becoming desolate. Walking over to the redwood tree, she knelt before the first green mass. The needles were not needles at all, they were tightly rolled hundred dollar bills. She opened them, one after another, into the palm of her hand. Looking up, she saw one final needle fall from the branch above her, the curled paper joining the thousands of others scattered around her feet.

A Tesla sped past, it’s wake rustling the adjacent masses of green. Pulling her purse open, she began filling it with the tightly furled bills. The seams of her purse stretched, but held, as she shoved each masqueraded needle into its depths. When the purse could hold no more, she pulled the zipper close and began filling her pockets, and then even her bra. When she could find no more space on her person to house the small green spools she walked across the courtyard and through the parking lot to her car. As she walked she quickly calculated; she had surely scooped up more than two-hundred needles, that was at least twenty-thousand dollars. Looking back, she saw the mounds of green waiting gracefully beneath the redwood tree. Then as she looked to the bench where she’d sat before, her eyes focused in on a small, black mass. Her hands instinctively felt her pockets, and as the virgin paper crunched beneath her groping fingers she knew that on the bench sat her work phone and notebook. Turning back to the car, she lifted her lanyard above her neck and then let her badge and noose fall to the ground.

At her apartment, she unlocked the door and pushed it open by the handle. Her husband looked up from his desk, his immediate surprise turned to pleasure. A smile spread across his lips, and he said, “Hey, You’re home early.”