I hear the voice of Jim Dale in the other room reading to my children.
I spread orange marmalade on my warm toast. I drink hot coffee from my favorite mug.
Look at all the things I have.
And yet I feel like crying.
Our part of the world is breaking apart and we wonder what it will look like when it's put back together again.
It is easier not to think about the future.
Then add rain.
Showers brings too near a physical representation of how we feel on the inside that is not welcomed even at the prospect of flowers.
Its easier to push aside the dread while the sun shines.
The rain confirms your worst fears.
I attempt to stay in the given moment and remember the good health of the people in my home.
We are so strong and so fragile.
Humans are so strong and so fragile.
Our planet is so strong and so fragile.
We are both at the same time.
And yet fragility seems to be the last one standing many days.
I made chocolate cookies today and it felt like I lassoed the moon. They were sickeningly sweet.
I rage cleaned the tub while listening to Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
For some reason I didn’t feel the usual high from the exertion of completing such a task.
Maybe it was because I only cleaned 70% of it.
Maybe it was because of the mean thought that tells me if I spend time cleaning my house
with my spare forty-five minutes, it means that I won’t be using that time to achieve my goals,
and I must not really want to achieve my goals because I'm choosing to clean instead.
But how can I really achieve my goals with a repulsive tub in the foreground?
Interesting how a person’s brain works.
My spouse says that he doesn’t think he is getting enough work done.
So I said, well maybe you shouldn’t work in the kitchen, it being the high traffic zone that it is.
I agree that he is allowed to vent. But for some reason, I feel somewhat responsible for creating
an unproductive atmosphere. Is that making it about me? This is very possible.
And so I rage clean the small room off the back where life remants have been collecting,
to help create an insulated work cave. One factor that contributed to my guilt is that
there is a part of his job where he has to scour through thousands of pieces of digital chemical samples.
It's the work that his bosses don’t like to do and work that I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole
and so I feel bad for him. He does it for our family, mostly without complaint.
I know I shouldn’t go so far as feeling guilty, because he still has a job.
He isn’t one of the 20 million people that no longer can claim employment.
I have a job too. But I don’t have to scour through small bits of data, so distracting me while at work
takes smaller toll on productivity. But maybe that isn’t true. I am trying to write a short novel.
It’s the personal goal I referred to earlier. But it's really hard to finish it. How do people do it?
I heard Margaret Atwood explain in a Master Class Instagram advertisement that “distractions are the
biggest hurdle facing a writer.” She said it really pointedly; like, don’t even bother trying to accomplish
anything if you have distractions. I don’t want to give up but it doesn’t seem I have much of a choice.
She very well may be more gentle once you register for her class, but who knows?
I’m so tired of hearing people, say what day is it? All the radio hosts are saying that.
Literally I heard three different people say that today on the radio. Check the calendar, people.
It’s not that hard. I know this stay-at-home situation is weird but it has also become kind of old news now.
This is our situation. And it's time to put our game face on.
I bought a new game for the family to play and no one wants to play it. That's cool.
It was more about online shopping than anything else. I'm sure we will get to it one day.
And I'm sure when we do play the game it will be the cause of many tears and insults and strife,
so maybe it's better that no one wants to play it.
Joy comes when my twin sister and I realize we have been drinking the same brand of coffee
during the days of social distancing. And it comes again when we describe the same coincidental
t-shirt purchase from an online retailer. The victory that our psyches have not been socially distanced
carries me through a few hours of not fretting about the future.
Often my days are marked by two anchors; a cup of coffee in the morning and a glass of wine
in the evening. I never tire of these daily milestones. As if auditioning for the lead in a coffee commercial,
I breathe in deeply the aroma of my coffee. And like Paul Giamatti at the beginning of the movie, Sideways
I close my eyes and take teeny sips of my wine in search of oak or blackberries or whatever
even if its being poured from a box. I don't want my friends the drinks to leave me because
the moments in between are complicated. As my coffee loses its heat it signals that life’s
business is pressing in around me, unavoidable.
I read headlines that the return to school in the fall is going to be complicated.
I will be working at a public school librarian and the thought of safely gathering a group of
first graders on the rug for a story sounds impossible. What will we do?
What kind of shape will we all be in at that point?
I am reading aloud Anne of Green Gables. Last night, we just read the chapter where Anne
comes in first place on her entrance exams to Queens.
Mathew knew all along this would be the case.
The joy of fiction overwhelms me in this moment.
It is the most beautiful escape.
Yesterday, I finished The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.
This book is deeply moving and an education of the highest order.
The characters grip your heart until they become a part of you.
I feel like I am plagiarizing something when I write that mini review, but it is so true.
