Today's writing

The evening dragged on. Lennon was fussy and didn’t want to go to bed. He didn’t want to sleep in his room. He so rarely slept there that it didn’t feel like home to him. He wanted to sleep on the couch, where he would be closer to Mommy and to Daddy. She felt her frustration rise, then tried to put herself in his place. He was just a little boy, a little guy who needed his parents. He wouldn’t always need them the way he needed them now. Blessing and travesty, that.

She wanted to be the one to put him to bed. There were times she worried that Gary was too involved and she not enough, and she didn’t want that to come back on her later. Her – her – it was always about her. What about how it would affect her child? There were times Ruth recognized the depth of her selfishness, the seeming nonexistence of a floor or ceiling, and it was like an electric prod to the stomach. Was everyone like this? No one would be able to tell you. We never see ourselves the way others see us, the way the world envisions our existence. It’s that conundrum with the voice, the way it jounces along the ear canal, the way it arrives at our hearing like a passenger shaken from a turbulent flight, off-kilter and staggering.