School started in earnest. Autumn came. Autumn went. I got completely overwhelmed by the horror playing out across the country. There was a hellish election that went on for ages as a cap to a hellish campaign cycle that went on for ages. Half the country thinks the results mean everything will be fine! great! normal! in a month and the other half think we’re now in a civil war. We adopted a dog. We had to give the dog back because it only tolerated one family member and charged and snarled at the other two. We agreed to get a puppy instead. There are no puppies. Every time I thought about returning to writing I could only focus on how long it had been and how little anything had changed except for the worse.
This week it’s been nine months since we started staying home and I’m starting to lose my shit. I hurt my back (neck? shoulder?) and it’s grinding at me. I forgot what it’s like to be in constant acute pain, forgot how irritable I am. Forgot how tender my child is when I’m irritable. I might be taking too much onto myself, but it did seem like we were doing okay until this rough patch. Which coincided with having to return a dog, the onset of gray winter days, and the complete lack of the usual holiday festivities at school, in the neighborhood, or with our families. Okay, so maybe it’s not all me. Still. We all failed to appreciate how much better I’d gotten until I got bad again.
I don’t have anything good to say about anything. My friends are teachers and they’re afraid of getting sick and deathly afraid of getting a family member sick. Same for my friends are who are doctors, nurses, social workers, restaurant workers, hairdressers. Same for all of us with chronic illnesses, disabilities, health risks that were typical but are now potentially deadly. It’s all terrible.
Here is something good: it snowed one half of an inch and my child was delighted and played outside for hours. Another thing: we successfully executed an allergen-free snickerdoodle. (Not a cookie I ever ate or made growing up, but I hear they’re popular among certain crowds.) One more: tomorrow I’m going in to get my neck patched up, the tree people are coming to take down the leaning cherry that’s been looming ever lower over the yard since we moved in, and as of noon we will have watched a virtual holiday show and be on winter break for the next 18 days. During which time we will eat cookies, read books, build Legos, watch for snow, and sleep as much as we can get away with.
Dig deep, winter ones. There’s no other way but through.