Left the San Francisco Writers Grotto

I'm not sure what to write here. I feel like I just wanted to say that I did. I was seriously considering it in the summer, but chose to stay. I wish I hadn't. 

Posted to FB in 2017

This morning consisted of hours of screaming. Then I drove Baz around a while and thought all was well. When we went to his play group, all he did was whine and cling to me.

"Me?" I asked when it was time for my check-in. "I'm curious about the toddler disease."

"What's that one?" one of the Mommies (TM) asked.

"A joke," I said, in a voice that could rival antifreeze.

Then the group's facilitator started asking me questions. Well, he's in day care now, right? You were GONE, weren't you? He's a little off kilter, isn't he?

My anger built and coalesced. Two years of the Mommy Squad telling me not only how to think and feel, but predicting how I was GOING to react to everything ahead of me.

"That's lame," I said.

"What's lame?"

"That supposedly I can't do things for myself, take time for myself. Baz can deal."

"Nothing is fair," she said, and smiled.

Six years ago

I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. There lay one of those lines you cross and can never cross back.

Thankful

Health scare resolved. COVID test negative. Thank goodness this week is ending on a good note. 

Baz to me

"I have to help people, Mommy!"

Today's writing

Outside lurks the enemy, too microscopic for most to target. Ten months since we last sat in a café, a restaurant. Nearly a year since we reliably sent our kid to school. Everywhere you look: death and neurosis. Don’t stand so close to me, will you? All of a sudden we are all Sting.

 

The spiral happened quickly. We were hearing about some crazy Chinese shit and then all of a sudden the governor was like, no big gatherings. Then no medium-sized gatherings. Then finally it was stay home, stay safe, stay solo. We laughed nervously and updated our Facebook statuses. We bemoaned the fact that our children were going to be home from school for a projected three weeks. The only way I figured I could handle that was because Danny was working from home. But I would handle it. It would pass.

 

Sure it would. Absolutely.

 

Life now: a series of emptyings and fillings, of planning dinner at breakfast, then, fatigued by doing so little and yet so much, contemplating take-out by the time the sun sets. Target and Trader Joe’s our escapes when we can no longer pretend to appreciate nature during our walks. Sex a refuge when we’re not so blasted from a full day of being a family unit, the togetherness a viper around all our necks.

 

Tell me this a year ago and watch me laugh. Derision, cynicism, ignorance. Not like the bottom wasn’t falling out – politically, professionally, personally. Not like we went from riding in the glass-bottomed boat to being trapped under it in one motion, the triumphant swish of that tail when predator devours prey.

Nadia Bolz-Weber on meditation

Meditation’s magic is in the returning. Not in the never having left.