These last few days, my thoughts have been eating up my insides. If I allow my brain to think, it goes to the meanest, hardest, darkest coves, which, sadly, are oh-so-familiar-to-me.
To distract away from profound discomfort, I drift in and out of 70’s soft rock:
If I could read your mind, love, what a tale your thoughts would tell….. AND THE HERO WOULD BE ME!
I do not feel like a hero. Could I be a hero? To MYSELF? To ANYONE?
You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you, the clouds in my coffee, the clouds in my coffee
This feels vain, self-obsessed, unhealthy. Stop it! Please, just stop it.
Oooh DANIEL, my brother, you are older than me, do you still feel the pain? Must be the clouds in my eyes, the clouds in my eyes…
God, there are so many clouds! I always have so many clouds!
Rain. Would be.
A relief.
Noises outside my brain are similarly persistent.
Apparently, while watching AMA Motocross reruns, my 5-year old is learning the catchy mechanisms of political ads. From the back seat he announces, “We brought JOBS back to Minnesota and put regular Minnesotans BACK TO WORK.”
“Is that a commercial for Governor Tim Walz?”
“No, it’s for some guy with white hair. Daddy and I see it ALL THE TIME on YouTube. ‘We BALANCE the BUDGET!’ Bring JOBS back to Minnesota. Vote for me’”
“I think it might actually be FOR Tim Walz. Mommy likes him; he was a teacher. He still sounds like a teacher when he talks about anything.”
“‘BALANCE the BUDGET! Balance the Budget!’ Do you like that, Mommy?”
‘I like balance. Budget, not so much. But your dad, he LOVES budgets. It’s our special magic - somewhere between balance and budgets.”
In two weeks, this five year old will begin kindergarten. He is excited. But, also, nervous.
“It’s a really BIG change, like the biggest change in my whole life. So far.”
“It is. I am proud of you for talking about it.”
He currently attends a therapeutic preschool to help talk about and process his big feelings. Before they upset a whole room. Or a kingdom, if it were up to him.
I have friends with children being dropped off in dorm rooms, some as freshmen, some seniors.
The ever-old reminder: I am out of sync.
When I was being dropped off in a dorm room, my mother was four months from her death. None of us knew.
Should we have?
I was trying to belong and become.
A bigger, truer version of myself.
A person of strength, wit, and S-P-A-R-K-L-E.
Laughing, thinking, trying hard.
In the company of similar others, all of us, trying out our colorful, shiny, new ribbons.
Moving round and round a series of predictable maypoles, yet the outcome? The ultimate design? Unknowable.
It was so very precarious.
My nest was crumbling.
We could only talk of promise. Hope. Positive change.
Relationships to last a lifetime. Cancer conquered. A strong launch. Freedom.
How to become a new arrival when you have no secure platform to jump from?
It was none and all of these things.
My only other comparably loving nest is crumbling.
Kids leaving. partner aloof, where do I find myself?
This newer nest: it needs a strong bottom, a high perch, a certain amount of shelter.
It all remains precarious.