THE MEASURE OF

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There’s an article in the newspaper about Beethoven’s skeleton
and how Beethoven had fingers
so much longer than the average man of his time
and even longer than the average man of our time,
and my husband shakes the article in my face and says
“See? This is why I can’t play piano! My fingers just aren’t long enough!”
even though his hands are much larger than mine
and I played classical piano for years
but I don’t say that.

Every day, the newspaper delivers some new slight against our family:
how I can’t be an astronaut because the new suit sizes
only fit people between 5’4” and 5’8”, how our daughter
might as well kiss her basketball scholarship goodbye because she’ll never be 6’ tall
and how she probably won’t make it into college at all
because she’s already 16 and she’s never run a charity out of our living room
how our cat isn’t cute enough to make it into the local newspaper
no matter how many times we submit his picture

pages and pages of statistics and facts
to lay our own meager accomplishments up against until
there really is no reason to get out of bed in the morning.
None at all.