I’m tired of the rain. I’m tired of struggling to figure out how to organize my stuff in this space. I’m tired of the sameness of the days; the rain that keeps me from getting outside and beginning to clear some land so that I can make a pleasant space to sit outside next summer.
The hummingbirds and other birds have left half-full feeders behind. Chipmunks scurry around with cheeks full of their winter supplies. No one has heard anything of the bear in a while.
……….
you find yourself spending more and more time sitting with her watching american movie classics. you begin knitting an afghan for your daughter for christmas. you’ve never learned to just sit and watch television. you have to be doing something constructive at the same time. even though she gets disoriented and sometimes forgets where she is, she seems to know that she is in a safe place. except for the time in her teens when she had to quit school and go to work in a carpet factory, all she’s ever done is cook, clean, and try to control her kids. she’s forgotten how to cook; her cleaning results in objects being misplaced and assumed, by her, to be stolen. but she can’t stop being a mother, even though you don’t need her kind of mothering any more. you and your brother work each day to make physical accommodations to the living spaces. your work styles are so different that working with him is stressful for you. gives you a headache. sends you both into shouting matches that neither can win. the work will be done soon. it had better be.
……………..
I have this urge to hibernate. Sleep all day.
I have this urge to stay up all night. Dance.
Once a week or so, I drive out the the pizza place and get pizza for dinner for all three of us. The guy who spins the pizza dough has begun to recognize me and waves as he spins. He looks a little like Cheech Marin — you know, from Cheech and Chong. He looks Hispanic. After I picked up pizzas the other day, I wondered about asking him if he knows anything about the Latin dances on Friday night at the dance club up the road. I want to ask “Do you do the Salsa? Meringue? Do you ever go up to the Friday dances?” Of course, I won’t. I’ve lost my edge.
Or maybe what I am is stranded on some other edge. Tired and uninspired.