Tuesday morning. I've already driven one daughter to school in the dark, come back, showered, made lunches, drank a cup of tea in bed while reading my Lord Peter Wimsey novel. Now I am in a black wool coat dusted with white dog hair, wet hair in ponytail, feet shoved carelessly into rain boots, urgently begging, "Get out, get out, get out!" as my middle daughter shambles out the car door, grasping lunch, bag, coat. We are late because I was trying to find our thermometer, which has once again gone missing, probably to treat a sick doll or Charley, our dog.
The school bus slows, opens doors, to let middle daughter dash over the lawn and safely into the bus. I try to ignore the way the bus driver is squinting at me through the wide bus windshield, as if trying to remind me that I am the only one she ever has to do this for, that all the other moms are there early, polished and chatting on the lawn before she even pulls up.
Then it's off to the pharmacy because Bea is still drooping all over the place, slumping in corners and now against the car door, insisting with a cough and a moan that she feels sick. It is flu season, after all. I leave the car running and scoot into the pharmacy, pay 25.00, and head back to the car, where all the doors are locked, and Bea, suddenly bright-eyed and not-so-sick looking, is sitting happily with Charley. She clambers over the seat; I open the door; Charley makes a dash for it--
ears flopping, an insane grin across his white whiskered face--
and I go running off after him in my clunky rain boots, yelling at the top of my lungs. I have a vision of him turning to the right, running into the busy highway, and getting squashed. Instead, he sprints through two automatic doors into the pharmacy, and there I find him, tail between legs on his way back to cold medicine, looking uncertain.
Shout an apology, settle back into the car with the offensive dog, rip open thermometer, hand it back to child (still coated in all the factory chemicals, no doubt), where she reads off three successive readings, all normal, and adds, "It tastes funny. And I'm hungry."
Back to the house to grab lunch and bag and tea to take the taste out of Bea's mouth, off to school, done. By the time I arrive home, realizing that tomorrow is February and I've forgotten to schedule the mortgage payment, I am reduced to mumbling to myself and forgetting whether I am making myself an egg or heating up a second cup of tea or paying my bills.
*
Ugh. It's not just this morning. I just can't seem to get my head on straight. As Martin said over the weekend, "I'd love to just return with my whole mind and heart to my life again, but I can't."
He's right; I can't seem to focus on my routines or even my work; I'm constantly feeling in my gut that something vital is amiss. Lately I've been waking very early in the morning, struck by anxiety. I fall back to sleep again, mercifully, but in the wee hours, the force of what my friend so aptly describes as the 'dark cloud' that descended on this world and our country bowls me over.
And yet, for me at least, who am not standing at the airport, waiting for my mother or my sister to come through the doors, wondering if my loved one will be allowed to come home with me--for me, life goes on, as it does for so many of us. And as we dress our kids, make lunches, rush to appointments and try to engage in good work, we wonder, What can I do? What else should I be doing? How do I balance this feeling of powerlessness and this outrage with my daily life and work? How do I live responsibly, well, bravely, in this fundamentally altered place?
The school bus slows, opens doors, to let middle daughter dash over the lawn and safely into the bus. I try to ignore the way the bus driver is squinting at me through the wide bus windshield, as if trying to remind me that I am the only one she ever has to do this for, that all the other moms are there early, polished and chatting on the lawn before she even pulls up.
Then it's off to the pharmacy because Bea is still drooping all over the place, slumping in corners and now against the car door, insisting with a cough and a moan that she feels sick. It is flu season, after all. I leave the car running and scoot into the pharmacy, pay 25.00, and head back to the car, where all the doors are locked, and Bea, suddenly bright-eyed and not-so-sick looking, is sitting happily with Charley. She clambers over the seat; I open the door; Charley makes a dash for it--
ears flopping, an insane grin across his white whiskered face--
and I go running off after him in my clunky rain boots, yelling at the top of my lungs. I have a vision of him turning to the right, running into the busy highway, and getting squashed. Instead, he sprints through two automatic doors into the pharmacy, and there I find him, tail between legs on his way back to cold medicine, looking uncertain.
Shout an apology, settle back into the car with the offensive dog, rip open thermometer, hand it back to child (still coated in all the factory chemicals, no doubt), where she reads off three successive readings, all normal, and adds, "It tastes funny. And I'm hungry."
Back to the house to grab lunch and bag and tea to take the taste out of Bea's mouth, off to school, done. By the time I arrive home, realizing that tomorrow is February and I've forgotten to schedule the mortgage payment, I am reduced to mumbling to myself and forgetting whether I am making myself an egg or heating up a second cup of tea or paying my bills.
*
Ugh. It's not just this morning. I just can't seem to get my head on straight. As Martin said over the weekend, "I'd love to just return with my whole mind and heart to my life again, but I can't."
He's right; I can't seem to focus on my routines or even my work; I'm constantly feeling in my gut that something vital is amiss. Lately I've been waking very early in the morning, struck by anxiety. I fall back to sleep again, mercifully, but in the wee hours, the force of what my friend so aptly describes as the 'dark cloud' that descended on this world and our country bowls me over.
And yet, for me at least, who am not standing at the airport, waiting for my mother or my sister to come through the doors, wondering if my loved one will be allowed to come home with me--for me, life goes on, as it does for so many of us. And as we dress our kids, make lunches, rush to appointments and try to engage in good work, we wonder, What can I do? What else should I be doing? How do I balance this feeling of powerlessness and this outrage with my daily life and work? How do I live responsibly, well, bravely, in this fundamentally altered place?
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