Last night at 8:17pm, my son hollared “DAMN IT” and slammed his door.
Right before that we replied, “Oh, no! So sorry! No. We forgot.”
And right before that he asked if we remembered the Thing He Wanted to Do which was at 7:30pm.
And right before that he said, “SHIT. I forgot the Thing I Wanted to Do at 7:30pm and now it’s 8:17 and I’m TOO LATE.” ...
Sometimes, when it’s quiet in my house, which is not very often because the dogs bark and the children bark at each other and sometimes I bark, too, but sometimes, when it’s quiet in my house–my sturdy house made of sturdy stuff–I feel a gentle shaking. I wait a minute. I pause. I assess. Is it shaking? Like, real shaking? Or am I just shaky. Like, is my bloodsugar low? Am I having an anxiety attack? And when I decide it is real shaking, as in external shaking, extrinsic shaking, objective shaking, I wonder next if it’s the Cascadia earthquake. The Big One. The 9 on the Richter Scale. ...
I don’t know. The older I get, the more I’m enamored with…in tune with…drawn by…the passing of the years. The impotence of the days. The importance of the seasons. Maybe this is what it is to get older. To speed up and slow down at the same time. To understand how quickly time passes and the constant of change and the way things stay immovably the same. Or maybe this is what it is to be human. Maybe this is what it is to become real like the Velveteen Rabbit, trading shiny, new make-believe for worn and weary truth but somehow, via mystery and magic as old as time, more beautiful for it. ...
I am a balloon.
I’ve tried and tried (and tried and tried) to find words that apply in this After Time. Which is to say, I’ve tried and tried (and tried and tried) to find words that apply to this Life. The era in which I exist is just a conceit. An important one, I think, for the After Times is an era of chaos and uncertainty and triumph and tragedy and looking for the helpers and being disappointed and uplifted, sometimes at the same time, but a conceit nevertheless because if we were honest we’d just admit Life has always been thus and thus will always be. ...
If I could visit myself in the past, I’d have a few things to say. Things Past Me didn’t know. Things Past Me couldn’t tell.
If I could visit myself in the past, I’d tell myself, “Being Thin is not the goal. Being Not Fat isn’t either.” If I could visit myself in the past, I’d tell myself to eat food when I’m hungry. “Eat,” I’d say. “Love eating. Love YOU.” ...
I’m writing to you today because I’ve been neglecting this space, and I miss you, and I want to explain where my words have gone.
Once upon a time, I set out to write a nonfiction book about the myths I once believed and the truths that replaced them. Myths like we’re supposed to strive for balance. And we should put our best foot forward. And motherhood wouldn’t break and remake me. I had an agent from a big New York literary agency. I had publisher interest. And I spent the next seven years Not Writing the Book. Or rather, I wrote the proposal myriad times. Sample chapters. Comp titles. Outline. The entire shebang. But I never finalized it with my agent (who deserves a special award for long suffering) because…I don’t even know…it never felt right? ...
Yesterday was my COVID Isolation Anniversary. One year of lockdown. One year of paying attention to toilet paper supplies. One year of stasis and rapid change, of everything-stays-the-same and it’s-all-different. One year during which life has become infinitely more simple and relentlessly more complicated. One year.
Friends check in occasionally. And I check in occasionally with them. How are you? they ask, and I ask them, too, even though I have no answer because how do you access that kind of information? How do you peel those layers? How do you know which crayon color in the box of 64 accurately evokes the color of a heart? The color of a mind? The color of a soul? Which crayon color is frustration? Which crayon color is gratitude? Which crayon color is laying awake at night and staring down invisible monsters? Which crayon color is I Don’t Know What’s for Dinner? Which one is Liberty and Justice for All? Which one is I’m Tired of Isolation? Which one is I Don’t Want to Return to “Normal”? ...
