Jan
18
I’m tired of being cooped inside by soggy cold dark weather but I suppose there’s no use in complaining: it’s January, and I live in Seattle. Get over it, self.
Still. Still! It’s madness around here sometimes. Madness, I tell you. (This is me clutching the front of your shirt, breathing little cuckoo puffs in your face.)
Dylan has entered some sort of thrilling new stage where he’s very energetic, very talkative, and very impulsive. In other words, he’s a giant pain in my ass. He’s become the sort of child I used to read stories about and chuckle indulgently: oh, come on now. No! No! I’m here to tell you these wicked children exist! I have one in my house right now, pounding the wall angrily because I’ve enforced Quiet Time, which used to be Nap Time, but is now I Don’t Give a Fuck What You Do In There As Long As I Get a Break from Your Little Face (PS: Love You!) Time.
The other day I emerged from the shower to find a series of long jagged tears in the fabric of our living room couch, stuffing poking out, each hole haphazardly covered in Scotch tape. After a flurry of denials from both children I eventually learned that Dylan had gotten his hands on a pair of adult scissors and performed the sofa appendectomies, while Riley had attempted to conceal the damage.
The next day, Dylan drew on his face with a Sharpie. The day after that, he drew on the wall.
Never mind the time I heard Riley announce he was going to the bathroom, then moments later his annoyed instruction: “Don’t touch it, Dylan.”
So we’ve got one kid who’s become impishly, adorably awful in that he cannot be trusted not to destroy entire sections of the house and wallow joyously in someone else’s private toilet affairs as soon as my back is turned, and then there’s Riley, who has returned to a stage I thought we had passed years ago, the stage of the Why, usually combined with a Hey Mom.
Hey Mom, what are you doing? Putting on my shoes. Why? Because I’m going to take out the garbage. Why? Because . . . it needs to go out. Why? Because that’s where the garbage goes? Why does garbage go? Because that’s . . . because it’s . . . because it goes in the can and then every Monday the truck comes and picks it up. Why? Because . . . because . . . uh, let’s talk about dumps.
Now, many times these spiraling conversations actually lead somewhere useful and I chalk it up to a Positive Homeschool Learning Experience of Some Kind (see also: Landfills, and Recycling!), but sometimes it reminds me exactly of that Louis CK routine:
Kid: Why?
Louis: Well, because some things are and some things are not.
Kid: Why?
Louis: Well, because things that are not can’t be.
Kid: Why?
Louis: Because then nothing wouldn’t be! You can’t have fucking nothing isn’t, everything is!
Kid: Why?
Louis: ‘Cause if nothing wasn’t, there’d be fucking all kinds of shit, like giant ants with top hats dancing around… there’s no room for all that shit!
Kid: Why?
Meanwhile Dylan does both the Why AND the Toddler Stutter AND his voice has a super high pitch AND he makes no sense half the time AND he’s obsessed with reenacting things so it’s like having a cross between Porky Pig and that Chris Colfer kid everyone loves from Glee asking me about stuff while they’re on PCP. “MOM? MOM? WHY DAT COW GOES CROSS THE RIVER ‘CAUSE HE DIN’T KNOW HOW TO SWIM LIKE DAT FERRY BOAT AND HE FELL LIKE DIS.” *demonstrates, dramatically, a falling cow* “RIGHT MOM? RIGHT?”
Riley: “Hey Mom? Why is it it 3 o’clock?”
Dylan: “I CAN RUN REAL FAR LIKE DIS, SEE?”
Riley: “Hey Mom? Why aren’t hamsters bigger than dogs?”
Dylan: “IT’S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME DERE YOU GO DERE YOU GO—”
Riley: “Hey Mom? Why are you rubbing your head?”
Dylan: “—WID A BASEBALL BAT!”
Riley: “Hey, hey, hey MOMMM?”
Etc!
Yesterday around 4:30 I was pretty sure the top of my skull was going to simply detach itself from my head and float away, carried by shrieks and gobbles and midair thrown Legos, and I happened to look outside and it was light grey. Instead of pitch black, you see. O, there is hope.
Jan
17
It’s about like I expected, this place. Run-down building, fluorescent lights, cheap plastic chairs, a carpet resplendent with mysterious stains. People refilling flimsy styrofoam cups from pump-driven cisterns of coffee.
As things get underway I strive for a position of relaxed, attentive listening, but my body language betrays me. My crossed legs and folded arms tell the room what everyone already probably knows: I’m in unfamiliar territory. I’m closed off like a clamshell, physically uncomfortable with the talk of God and power and the odd group response to certain phrases. It reminds me of church, or maybe like a less-raucous midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I’m surreptitiously eyeballing everyone in the room and my eyes feel hot and prick with self-pity as I decide I don’t belong here, not with these people. Not on this shitty chair, in this shitty place with the shitty overhead lighting.
One by one, people start talking. Hi, Bob! People tell things. Hi, Jessica! I’m doing something awkward and jittery with the strings of my sweatshirt, twisting them over and over around my fingers, like the hair-twirling habit I had as a kid.
Hi, Matt!
Jail, restraining orders, public urination, divorce. Rock bottoms, and the shovels people used to keep digging. Stories pour through the room and are held aloft by nods and murmurs.
90 days. 2 weeks. 20 years.
A woman haltingly describes how she was at a party, her first as a nondrinker. She says she couldn’t dance; she tried, but felt self-conscious. “I used to love dancing,” she says quietly.
Even in gain, there is loss. I know this.
At the end everyone stands and the two people on either side of me reach out to clasp my hands and everyone says something in unison, a prayerlike something, and this part I hate, oh god, I do not want to be standing there holding someone’s goddamned hand, and afterwards I rush to my car and wipe my palm on my jeans, no one said anything about holding hands.
All day long I can still hear those people’s stories. They’re moving around inside of me somehow. I’m a gusty house that is both too empty and too full, ghost voices echoing through the halls.
Anonymous room, anonymous faces. Where everyone has one thing, that shameful thing I don’t ever want to talk about, in common. Where nothing I could have possibly said would have been met with contempt.
I imagine talking to those people. Telling them anything I want. I imagine unspooling, breaking open. I think how if that happened, I couldn’t put myself back together again in quite the same way.
My hand itches at the memory of a stranger’s touch. I don’t know what it takes to reach out—across all the space I’ve surrounded myself with—and grab hold.
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