“Babe, I have been having a nervous breakdown for the last couple of hours because I spilled coffee all over my computer and now I think it is broken.”

This is the message I write to Musette, who does not responds for hours, being at work, and unable to answer her phone. I want to call my mother. Because this reminds me of the day I lost my glasses and couldn’t get ready for school. But I know that with the wedding rings already in a FedEx truck, she has been replaced.

…

Sitting at my desk, with a Youtube video showing me from my phone how to replace the keyboard of a different computer model, the phone rings:

“Are you ok?” asks Musette

“The tone of sympathy in your voice is calming me down rapidly.” I respond.

I don’t tell her that she is the person I am most afraid of: the family breadwinner, who is barely treading beneath the bills which have been piling up so rapidly recently. With me being too spoiled to go very long without a computer all my own. Because the computer is the modern typewriter which is my canvas to the magic, moving window of literature and all the world’s knowledge. I don’t tell her that I consider myself in a different category than others. She already knows that. She knows that I believe that my computer means more to me than others do to others. Because everybody is addicted to this canvas which I paint on. But without mine I feel purposeless, being here, unemployed, a sugar baby to her meager wage. I become purposeless, handicapped, crippled, amputated.

“I am going to be home so fast.” she says. “Don’t panic. Peter says to put your computer in rice. But I don’t know if that is a good idea. Just wait for me to get there, ok? and we will deal with this together.”  

“I can’t wait for you.” I say. “I am coming to get you. Let me just put some clothes on.”