I’m letting night come on naturally, allowing dusk and then dark evening to envelop my home. The boys have a window open and a small light on in their bunk, a temporary Lego fortress. Some days, some hours, the need to hide away comes on suddenly. I’ve had enough. It all bunches up behind my jaw, in my shoulders, tight hands.
Between bouts of awareness (knowing this too shall pass) I simply feel scared, the nameless way, as if all of it is too much. It is. Too much. If I were to keep paying attention to the world, I would break, as my filter is temporarily broken. For an hour, maybe a few.
Later, I will look back, and thankfully, not be able to capture the feeling of being overwhelmed. Gratitude will spread across my heart like a sunrise and I may even laugh out loud for no audible reason. I am not there yet. If I try to look ahead at that time of liberation, I will miss the gift right here and now. A time to pull it all together, the misery, mystery, lack of control, warmth, love, sacredness of my family, that memory-cultivating breeze this morning, the one that, as it caressed my sleepy form, asked me to be seven again, listening to my parents laugh in the kitchen.
So I sit here in my cave, inches from a flurry of young activity as the boys have now moved into the kitchen – the ongoing telling of a made-up story only they can narrate as no one else knows the characters so well, accidentally microwaving a spicy burrito and correcting matters, nearly continual motion, the flicking on of artificial lights. I’m appreciative in a distant way. Present but careful, waiting to mend.
Writing is my prayer.
image found here