There are three flies buzzing around the dining room where I am trying to work and I think I’m about to lose my mind. The dog is incensed and I’m frustrated. I’m irritated by the flies. I’m annoyed that doors were left open that should have been shut. I feel my most adult, and possibly hypocritical, when I demand of everyone and no one at once, “How hard is it to shut the screen when you come in?!”
I’m angry with my own inability to do anything but wave a hand wildly as the little demons dive bomb my person, kamikaze screaming past my ear with a high-pitched buzzing whine that makes me grit my teeth. One lands on the edge of my open laptop and rubs his dirty little front legs together smugly. I want the old orange plastic flyswatter on its wire handle that used to hang in the kitchen of the farmhouse I grew up in. I don’t even own a flyswatter now, though I’m thinking about running to Lowe’s at lunch, but I can very clearly hear the satisfying thwack that comes from knowing you just dispatched one of those little suckers. Across the street, every house’s windows open on this first day of Autumn, a baby cries and cries, and honestly, I get it.
Lately, I vacillate mostly between angry, frustrated and peckish. I have stern talks with myself about getting more exercise and eating better so that I feel better and want to exercise more and then eat even better in a spiral of wellness. I sleep poorly, but it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning because really, what new hell will be unleashed on us today? I think I’m waiting to see how the state of the world sorts itself out before I commit to coming out of my wine and cheese induced stupor. My favorite cheese right now is manchego, for its substantialness, important in a frustration snack. Something that you need your teeth for, just a little. And as for wine, just keep it coming, but not merlot.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with my daughters about magic. And how it does not exist in this house. There is no magic that stocks our fridge or pantry. No magic that makes school lunches or folds laundry or empties bathroom trash bins. Magic does not close their shower curtain to keep it from mildewing, nor pick their discarded clothing from the bathroom floor. They were largely unimpressed. This was my most direct foray into the pressure cooker that is bubbling inside me on a daily basis while I maintain an increasingly fragile sheen of understanding, calm, nice mom. This is the growing storm that no amount of wine and cheese can deescalate. A few days later, at the drop of some overdue French homework and a smirk, I became a banshee. Our neighbors with the crying baby were likely relieved that they weren’t the ones disturbing the neighborhood. I yelled until my throat hurt, and I felt no real relief. The pressure valve had popped, but there seemed to be no end to the cooker’s streaming contents which remained now uncovered but at a rapid boil. My children left for their week at their father’s. My youngest refused to hug me good-bye. She called to apologize that evening. And then the next morning texted that “because you were screaming at me yesterday, you made me forget my language arts book.”
And somehow, in that moment, I realized that in a world that is in shambolic straits, we only control what we take control of. I can’t expect the world to bend to the things that I am keeping seething inside. I am in the midst of pandemic fatigue, school fatigue, political fatigue. I’m mourning a life that I was taking for granted, but in my grief cycle, I can’t seem to get past Anger. I’m devastated that an impeached, amoral charlatan gets to set the stage to strip my daughters of rights that their grandmothers already fought for. I’m seething that even as our country literally burns down, federal climate change policies are being toppled so that oil can be drilled out of our national parks and our vehicles can belch out nitrogen oxide unrestrained. We’re so entrenched in systemic racism that the phrase Black Lives Matter enrages whole portions of the population. I never would have guessed when I was my daughters’ age that we could be here today, and I worry for them and for their far-future 40-year-old selves. We’re a broken, hurting, angry country finding new ways every day to be more broken, more hurt and more angry. I have no clear sense of how it ends, how it gets better.
I cried the cry of pure grief when Justice Ginsburg died last week. The sobbing that hollows you out and leaves you puffy eyed and head-achy. It was partly so many disappointments and fears colliding in one very crystalized event. And it was partly the fact that, a little bit, I was still holding on to the hope that even if magic doesn’t rinse dinner plates or vacuum up all those little corners of construction paper after a craft project, maybe there was still a little bit left in the world, even so, and maybe we could use it to steady the path for my daughters as they go forward, so that they don’t have to fight for control of their own bodies and workplace parity and breathable air.
I can’t control all of that. Not even Greta Thunberg or Bill Gates or George Clooney can control it. It’s overwhelming. But I can start in my own household by turning down my own bubbling rage and setting clear, concise expectations. French homework gets done, or electronics go away. The dishwasher gets loaded after dinner by those who ate but didn’t prepare the meal. Dinner conversation will be expected. Personal viewpoints and anecdotes encouraged.
When my daughter told me that it was because I yelled that she forgot her school book, I resisted the urge to be sorry and replied, “No. Regardless, you are responsible for your own things.” And in the end, that’s the point. We’re all responsible for our own crap, no matter how long this pandemic goes on, or who is in the White House, or how disappointed we feel when we wake up in the morning to another news cycle that breaks our hearts. And so, to live by non-magical example, I’m going to start expecting more from me, and making sure that, if there is only a tiny part of this wildly spinning planet I can command, I am in control of that little corner, rather than being controlled by my roiling emotions.
It’s the first day of autumn, and one of my favorite autumnal reminders is, “Like a tree, let the dead leaves drop.” Those things that do not serve us, hurt us. They drag us down and wear us out, and we can’t hold on to it all in any case. So I’m keeping cheese. I’m keeping wine. I’m keeping all screen doors tightly shut. I’m realigning my expectations to the things that I can control in this moment, without magic. I’m raising children who will be on the side of science, empathy, and respect.
And I’m voting.
