This week has been a high speed zigzag, and a time of clinging. I am so very, very lucky to be who/where/what I am, because my biggest immediate pains have been my loss of desire to stream NPR all day at work and to read dystopian novels in the evenings. I feel this keenly.
I really like being a niece, but this week I was seized as a mascot between aunts and uncles, a target on one side for vocal affirmation and on the other for denouncement. It's never happened before, and it feels weird to block family-in-law from being able to send me facebook messages, but here we are. 2016 has never happened before, either.
2016 is liminal at work, too. There are many ways this is true. Sometimes I am shocked that I am still here, but there is an appeal to being the pillar (for me). There is an appeal to being a pillar slowly shifting, but not too much at once. In this week of mourning and fear I have been grateful for the minutia like web conferences and staff meetings and prepping for end-of-semester maintenance.
Oh and I'm a mom to a toddler who is tall and clever and draining, who doesn't talk but squawks, who lights up the room with his joy and silliness. He's predictable and glorious and I get really worn down by him sometimes. There is still that wedge of my soul that thinks from time to time, was this a good idea?? But then, his existence could never been called into question. He is, he was going to be. We're going to laugh and cry our way through his childhood.
