for Darlena.m4a

[0:00] Darlena, hi. I hope you don’t think this is weird, but I wrote a song about you before we met. Well, I didn’t write it exactly; it appeared, I guess. I can explain, Darlena—and I really, really like your name, I can imagine how the people who know you sigh it like they just breathed in the first wisps of the lilac breeze in the summer, letting it fill them for just a moment before letting it out and bestowing those three syllables onto the rest of us, um.

[0:31] Sorry, what was I going to say?

[0:35] Oh. I started playing ukulele last year, something to pass the time. I think that my hands might be a little too worn and pudgy nowadays to do anything serious with it, if I’m being honest. I don’t know how people pull off some of those fancier chords that make you hold down three strings with one finger and then another string way down at the end with your pinky like a contortionist. But I can do a pretty good C, and a G, and an F, with a little A sharp thrown in there to shake things up.

[1:14] And I was sitting on the couch the day we met, although maybe “met” is a strong word, and I decided to open Instacart to see if there were any good deals going on at Cub because it had occurred to me just before when I decided to make toast that I didn’t have any bread, and then I realized that there wasn’t much food left in my apartment at all, except for a jar of peanut butter and a few cans of that Campbell’s squash soup up in the cupboard. I forget what it’s called exactly, it’s the soup Mindy Kaling likes, but I’ve been trying to eat less of it because of my new…

[1:46] Sorry, that’s not important, it’s not a big deal, but I’ve just been a little paranoid about my blood pressure and there’s a bunch of salt in that stuff. 

[1:57] And, sorry, as a side note, I’m not usually the kind of person to pay someone to do my grocery shopping for me. I used to really like doing it, but that was quite a while ago. This is… 

[2:16] This is embarrassing, Darlena, but you seem very kind, my husband… my ex husband and I, ha, wow, used to go grocery shopping every Sunday afternoon as a little date. Until things changed and we didn’t.  So, when we finally parted ways, really, not a big deal, it just became harder to do it by myself. If you can believe it, the last time I tried, I ended up crying out of nowhere, just a little, in the pasta aisle. Normally I would just pull it together, but a lady who was looking at pesto turned to stare at me and I knew that she was wondering how anyone could love a woman with so much of her future burnt right through, and that realization made things worse.

[2:57] I pushed my cart to the end of the aisle, but I ended up leaving it there because I started to feel like I wasn’t in my body anymore and could barely move. I’m sorry, I hope you understand. Sometimes a woman’s got to go cry into her rigatoni at home, right? Kidding.

[3:24] Anyway, I was sitting there and I had all my groceries picked out, apples, potatoes, wheat bread, rice cakes… I don't know why I started listing all my groceries as if you'd want to know all that, although maybe you remember?  Oh, and how could I forget, toothpaste, thanks for grabbing that! I didn’t know they sold that. I tapped the green “place order” button, and I have to admit, Darlena, it wasn't my first time. But unlike all the other times that I’d pressed the button, after a few minutes, in that spot where it tells you who your shopper is, your name popped up. 

[3:55] Darlena.

[4:01] I can’t be the first person to have told you this, but your name is so easy and lovely to sing. When The Beatles wrote about words that slip away across the universe, drifting waves of joy, I think they may have been thinking about “Darlena;” if they weren’t, I think that if they met you, they would wonder how a song could become a woman. And trust me, I’m not usually much of a singer—for a good reason!—but when I read your name on that screen, something in me knew that it was meant to be sung.

[4:33] Once it came out a few times, I realized that it might be an odd thing to sing the name of a person you’d never met, or at least someone you wouldn’t meet for an hour and a half, according to the app. But my ukulele was sitting right there, and I thought I might as well add some music. I started with a C because it felt fundamental, kind of like your name, and then I switched to a G, and then an F. At first, it was three Darlenas, one for each chord, but then it changed to one long one and…well, you’ll hear it for yourself. 

[5:07] After that, words kept pouring out and became lyrics. I just want to apologize if I assumed anything about your life. Well, I definitely did, but only wonderful things. The line where I say, “we’ll figure it out” when I do the A sharp, I didn’t mean to imply that you have a lot to figure out; I just felt like you might be the kind of person that makes it easy to feel like things will be okay. And when you offered to help carry the groceries up to my room (sorry that I cut you off when you said that Darlena, I just didn’t want you to see my life like this), I felt it for myself.

[5:39] I wonder, when you left, if any part of you knew that I'd sing your name for the rest of the day. 

[5:48] Anyway, I didn’t write the song down, so like I said, I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that I wrote a song, but I definitely have one. Maybe it’s like how some history only gets passed down orally. If you like it, you can keep it.

[6:07] And again, sorry, I know this might be strange because I doubt that you usually get any kind of follow-up from Instacart customers, let alone something like this, and now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to get this to you. Can you still contact your shopper in the app a week later?

[6:41] But I think that if someone wrote a song about me, I’d want to know. There are only so many songs written by someone about someone in this life.

[6:52] I’m rambling. Sorry. This is for you, Darlena.