I think I can actually feel the people around me.
You ever get this way, like everything around you is a blur, like popping christmas bulbs in bare feet, you keep yourself a little bit away, like behind saran wrap. Not on purpose just because it seems more sanitary. Like so no one gets hurt caring and when I say no one I mean me. And these are good people.
I'm not saying it will last, I'm just saying when your 20 year old son is coming home on winter break still and helping wheel your mom to her bed and she reaches out and touches his face, my life stops a second. and he's also made her house smell like cinnamon because he decided to bake a pumpkin pie at bedtime and she has the warmest oven, and we put christmas music on even though it's January, it's still christmas at Mom's.
There are fresh sheets on her bed and I taught a kindergarten class in here the easiest way there is to teach a kindergarten class, in your pajamas with Surf's Up on Netflix (that is a cartoon of surfing penguins) with my mom kind of watching it in the bed right off to the left of my zoom screen. And dogs lying all around on the floor in the innocent sunlight meandering through just checking on us during those hours.
Even though Emma is leaving, my little baby the middle one who never made any fuss except about a boy band, there is an ocean of people that ebb and flow from my house, even if it is only actually five people and Patrick. Everyone takes out the trash. I guess is what I'm saying. Everyone is home to help.
Covid grounded Emma with me an extra four months and I'm grateful. Covid grounded me so I could teach at home and take care of my mom. So even though we're all tired and working hard and getting nowhere, I can feel everyone. On my ride today I could see leaves in the woods, like when I was a kid, and when I rode through the woods I was only seeing the woods. Not all the other things I needed to do. I think I always see the leaves, I am always dissolved into the woods, but today I realized hey I am still here, and I am good.
I'm gonna try and let myself feel my people and all that ocean filling us up and emptying us out and try not to be scared of joy.
