I am lost. It’s as if I am a sleepwalker woken up in another room. Even the face of my waker is a stranger to me. Nothing is where I left it; my books closed and unread, abandoned in piles at my bedside. This Autumn, a season of such unexpected warmth and sunshine, has left me in darkness. I am constantly cold. Some days I leave my coat on until my daughter comes home from school. I tear it off and shove it into the closet when I hear her footstep at the front door. I bake and I cook but I don’t eat. While my family swirls in and out of this little house I am left standing at a center that I cannot hold. But, I am trying, so very hard. For the first time I am so separate from my children that sometimes I don’t even say goodnight to my daughter, embarrassed that at 8:30 I can’t keep my head up anymore. She is in her room, chatting, working, singing Christmas carols in a high, sweet soprano, and I am in mine, a single lamp puddling light on a book that won’t be read. I am homesick and I can’t go home.
Spring
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| James |
I am in a state of longing. Spring is such a near thing and yet, this morning, the little pot of ivy I left out is rimmed in frost. Frost! I rub salt into my homesick wound by checking the London weather on my computer dashboard: 75 all week. I squeeze lemon into my emotional paper cut by watching the Kings Road web cam obsessively. I can see the school children in their woolly jumpers and tidy lines serpentine along the footpath on their way between playing fields and classrooms. For a moment I am sure I see my own in that line. Perhaps it’s because my photographs of that time are so blurry?
Catchy Pop Tune of the Descended from a Large Loaf of White Bread Mother
The world (oh, fine, a whole bunch of moms in their own little world) has been aflutter the last week or so over Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, a law professor and generally terrifying individual. She begins by establishing what her daughters were never allowed to do in her pursuit of the perfect academic record for them both: sleepovers, school plays, help little old ladies across the street. She then goes on to explain, clearly, pleasantly why A+ grades, concert-worthy piano-playing and throwing little old ladies under a bus if they are between you and your piano are so much more important than macaroni picture frames.
Weep No More, My Lady
Here is something you should know about me. I’m not a crier, not really. I do not cry about sad/bad things happening in my life. Ever. I didn’t cry when my mother died. I’m not a hard-hearted Hannah, I just don’t cry about the big things. I do, however, weep copiously when small children sing at school concerts. I cry when I see a little person lost in the supermarket. I cry when I see a balloon floating away in the sky. I have been known to cry at that 1970s ad for some do-good organization that features a kid in group home writing a letter to Santa asking for a puppy. Does anyone remember that ad? One kid says “Santa won’t bring you a puppy!” And then, the do-gooder volunteer/ Secret Santa/postal worker guy reads the letter. On Christmas morning, the kid finds a puppy waiting for him. Of course he does. The look on his face? Priceless. The look on the pooh-poohing kid’s face? Oh, the humanity!!