I'll Show Myself Out

So much of who I was—my daily habits, my identifying clothing—had to get thrown away in making room to become a mother. What’s left of me is now sharing space with a little boy, and as a result, my mental capacity has been reduced from a decent three bed/two bath apartment to, at best, a little tenement studio. While the tight space creates some co

Just surviving is the success.

At the same time, you’re also aware that upon attempting to reenter normal life from mom-land or middle-aged-land, or both, you’ll be seen as a weirdo, or cranky, or stubborn, or all of the above. Doesn’t it make sense you’d think about just not going back?

Some of the changes are easy to embrace: I personally have loved the feeling of being out of fucks to give about so many of the dumb things I gave all my fucks to when I was younger. Others require a more painful adaptation.

Later that night, I lie awake thinking about it. What true little book is there, really? “We are alive. “One day we will die. “Some things will be the same, and some things will be different.” In the dark I think, What if, when we die, everything is different and nothing is the same? (That is a terrifying thought.) Then I think, What could I write

“Moms and dads do know some things that are gonna happen,” I responded. “LIKE WHAT?” he said. “Well . . . we know we are always gonna love you and we’ll always be a family,” I said, and even as I said it, I knew how inadequate it was. He wanted to know that I could reassure him of something

Asher, now five, came up to me and said, “I’m worried.” Me: About what? Him: About what’s going to happen. Me: (panicking) With what? Him: I don’t know, just what’s going to happen! No one knows! I had never seen this in him before, this kind of generalized anxiety about the future. He was becoming more and more like me.

I was so focused on boiling everything down to that “safest haiku” that I would sometimes forget that the caveat to every little book is: we have no idea whatsoever about what is going to happen. Just by writing about any version of the future at all, the little books were actually more acts of pure faith, little essays asserting some known reality

A beginning, a middle, an ending. Solid ground. Some things will be the same; some things will be different.