Phenomenology

My mom and sister are in my living room, swung by, unexpected, and we’re all in a little circle around the coffee table, killing time before the appointment that took them into town. 

They hand me a bag of produce, small apples and Asian cucumber, picked up free from the roadside. I set the plastic grocery bag on the kitchen counter, which migrates to the dining room table, which migrates to the seat of the dining table’s chair. (Found by my roommate in two weeks, regretful and rotten, a colony of fruit flies. Fruit flies we’re still dealing with today, infested in the sink drain.) 

It’s a week and some change before my 22nd birthday, and my license is set to expire.“You shouldn’t go in, if you don’t have an appointment,” my sister says. “You Can, but they probably won’t see you. I showed up at five am without one. They only let me in because I was the first person in line. A guy with a megaphone came out and told everyone else to go home.” 

They don’t like to let you make an appointment. On their website, nothing is available within a hundred miles except one, in Seattle, at 8:15 the next morning. 

“Just keep checking, two or three times a day,” my sister says. “Things open up. I’ve managed to get, like, five.” (I don’t think to question why she could need that many.) 

I start checking, when I remember. 

Two days before my birthday, scrolling through my phone at work, I managed to get one, an appointment. Same day, four thirty in the afternoon, on my way home but two hours after I’m off. The DOL in Mt. Vernon. 

I buy myself a panini and sit at a picnic table and stare at the sky. I didn’t put on makeup that morning. A toddler runs around, banging his toys against the metal of a fence post. The sun is too bright. I’m sticky in my work clothes. 

The waiting area is crowded when I get there, half hour early, bad at killing time and afraid of getting lost. I walk towards the check in desk, unmanned, but a voice calls out to me, a woman standing with her teenage son on the edge of the sea of plastic chairs. She looks like soccer practice. 

“They’re not seeing anyone else today.” Smug. 

“I have an appointment.” 

“Oh.”

I walk up to the check in desk. A window of clear plastic and an empty chair; a turned off computer monitor. I play around with the ticketing machine, also off, sliding out a strip of blank receipt paper, feeling silly. Trying my best to look hapless and pathetic and girlish and like someone should really come help me, please. I look at the man sitting closest. “Sorry, I might be stupid, am I missing something?” 

He shrugs apologetically. 

The same woman from before pipes up, unhelpful, “Even if you have an appointment you still need a ticket.” In hindsight, I think she wanted me to leave. 

Giving up on anyone actually working there, I lean on the wall by the door. 

A kid comes in and stands next to me, squinting at the TV screen they’re projecting the ticket numbers onto. He seems too young to have so many face tattoos. 

“Has WVB6 passed?”

”I don’t think so.” 

“I think I need glasses.”

“Mine don’t work too well.” 

“Really?” 

“Maybe.” 

His number gets called. 

A man comes in now, it’s 4:10. He’s wearing an oversized suit jacket. He goes up to the vacant check in desk, plays with the computer monitor and pulls blank receipt paper from the ticketing machine. Having been consumed by the mob, I tell him they’re not seeing anyone else today, unless he has an appointment. He thanks me, shrugs, and leaves. 

A woman comes in, goes up to the desk. Someone tells her the same thing. “Oh, but I have an appointment at 4:20.” 

At least we’re in the same boat then, I say, and we stand next to the doorway, huddled over our phones, comparing. As we watch, she gets a text, asking her to confirm that she’s there, and to check in. An online ticket is sent to her phone. 

“You don’t have that?” She asks, and I think the concern is genuine.

“Not yet, but I also got here really early.” 

We stand there for a few minutes, together, then her number gets called. 

Ten minutes before my appointment, I get the same text as her. 

On her way out of the building, she stops by the door to check on me. Make sure I’ve got it. Makes my chest warm.

I get my photo taken and I update my contact information and then I fail the eye exam. The woman behind the counter, lovely and overworked, says something so fast that I don’t understand. “I’m just going to scrap the whole thing. You’ll have to update your information again, but besides that. Just go get your eyes checked honey.” She goes on. 

I don’t have a current optometrist, I tell her, hoping she’ll repeat the first bit. She makes a complicated shrugging motion at the thought of an expired license. “Ehhhhh.” Followed by, “Go to Costco or Target or something.” Driving home, I do a little screaming, and in the evening my boyfriend and I eat too much pizza and ice cream.

At the eye appointment, four days after my license expired, the optometrist tells me my prescription is largely the same. I get new glasses anyways. 

Once, an optometrist, while checking in at the hotel, told me that people’s prescriptions level out around 16, because that’s when they start driving. You have to focus your eyes, to look down the road. 

It takes a week for my new glasses to be ready. Eyes level down the road, pretending to drive like there are so, so many drugs in the car. 

I managed another DOL appointment yesterday. Three thirty, in Anacortes, after work again. A long time since I’ve been. Out of my way. I put on a little makeup in the morning, at least. Half an hour early, again, but cold enough to wait in the car. It’s going to start raining. I have a stomach ache. Everything is gray. 

It’s a single room and a single woman working. Every woman who works at the DOL is the same person, an underfunded hive mine.

At the Anacortes DOL, there’s no television screen, and no where to check in. The ticketing machine is just a roll of paper on a metal pole by the door. The ceiling is high, and everything is covered in linoleum. They have a led scoreboard above the service area, like at a high school basketball game. 

I sit down and wait for my text to check in. Five minutes before my appointment,the lady working just calls my name. 

She updates my contact info, and takes my photo. “That was a great one,” an older lady says. Sitting right across from the camera. I’m hopeful and unbelieving and taking the compliment. (I got it today, in the second draft. Everyone keeps saying I look like a woman.)

I’m waiting for the vision test. I glance at the machine, the goggles. The thought of failing again has been giving me stress dreams. Someone told me about failing, someone going blind. I don’t want to go blind. Her sweater is grey, with pink sequins. They’re in the shape of an animal. I can’t remember what kind. It’s like trying to remember a constellation.

She doesn’t test me.

She doesn’t fucking test me.

I’m at my moms. I’m telling her the story, the testing/not testing. The confusion and relief.

In her bathroom, above the sink, there’s a framed photo of a bathroom sink. Next to the bathtub, there’s a photo of a bathtub.

She’s funnier than I’ll ever be.