Carrie on

It’s one of those (THOSE) days. I’m ready for bed, and we haven’t even eaten dinner yet. If it were just me, I’d skip it. It isn’t just me, so dinner’s in the oven. Sounds are louder than usual and seem to reverberate inside my skull. The pollen count is exponential even though it’s only February. The kids are bouncin’ and fussin’ like ‘possums in a live trap, and I have a headache. Really, everyone’s talking at once except for me, because I don’t feel like talking. I don’t feel like listening either, but it’s my job so I grin and grit, my teeth. That only sounds harsh if you don’t have your own children, or if you have one child but not two, or if you have more than one child but a living room bigger than a toll booth. In truth, our living room is a fine size for a family of four, but not when the sound is bigger than the space it can fill….Lord, help me Jesus.

“All we are, we are.” Matt Nathanson Internal conflict: a struggle inside one’s self involving thoughts, feelings, or emotions. Or all of the above. External conflict: a struggle between one and an outside force. So what is it if you feel at conflict with the world itself? Exhale. That’s hyperbole. I don’t know the whole world, and some people actually like me, so that statement isn’t actually true at all, but feelings don’t care much about truth, do they? Sometimes my feelings feel separate from me. Separate from my mind, my rational mind. My mind that is driven by something even deeper than rational thought…my intrinsic mind—my subconscious primeval self that says, “You will ensure that your young survive. You will supply food, shelter, security. You will bare your teeth to protect your children. To protect your family.” These parts, the inside or outside of my conscious self, the motherfighterwarriorproviderstandupandbiteorscreamifyoumust and the loveexplodeserruptsseep...

There's no room to stretch or adjust. I'm not even certain there's furniture to sit on. The teevee has dials that clunk clunk clunk and a smooth one too that adjusts the picture. This isn't cable, and if the wind blows too hard, we won't get to watch anything until Daddy can get back on the roof. Dallas is on, hot air popcorn and coca colas on the TV room floor. We watched Dallas every Friday night. I think it was Friday; maybe it was Saturday....whichever day, or night, our family watched together. Every week. I must have been young, and I can't believe my parents even allowed us to witness the exploits of J.R. Ewing, but they did, and we did, and we loved it. Every week there were warnings and there were threats. "Okay. If you can't be quiet, you're going out." "Now be quiet, commercials are over. Watch that drink!" "I can't hear." "Make her be quiet!" "STOP ASKING QUESTIONS AND JUST WATCH!...

The left thumb. That’s the sucking one. I know, because right now she’s sitting beside me, face cool with concentration, index finger almost touching her nose, almost. Her right hand holds Ninnie’s (Minnie Mouse’s) arm. Her fingers work the flimsy arm back and forth, mindlessly knitting at the graying pink fur. Her index finger reaches up and touches her nose. She readjusts and begins again.

If you haven’t felt it for yourself, I’m not sure that you can fully understand. Its presence is not unlike a sixth sense. An unexplained yet apparent awareness of things that simply occurs, sometimes. It’s like that, in the sense that it is temporary, fleeting, and impossible to predict. But, it is also more than that. If you’ve never felt it,  you might relate if I connect it to the feeling  that comes with seeing someone whom you love…unexpectedly, across the room. You glance, and there that person is. Did you feel it? That leap? That flutter? That momentary discombobulation and uneasiness until your mind has time to process that this occurrence is in fact welcome and in fact good. That, that is the feeling, in part.  And then there is something else. This is where I fear I may lose you, but it is this which motivates my fingers on these keys. Let’s see. Have you ever pondered something…just considered, ‘what if?’ long enough to let your heart believe for a seco...

I knew that it was you when I saw your package on the kitchen table. Among the second grade papers, and napkins fallen over from their holder, lay a bulging mailer with bad penmanship….Patch’s penmanship, of course, a doctor. I opened your package with cautious care and eager messiness….careful not to rip. Anxious to see. I opened and declared, “It’s the pendant, she’s here.” For a long time I held you in my hands in disbelief perhaps. I ran outside as the UPS man delivered Christmas presents wrapped in a brown cardboard box, and I giggled to myself, because I knew that you knew and understood. I knew what the kids did not…that Santa shops early because there’s a budget and that even with a budget (even a teacher’s budget, or a nurse’s budget) Santa makes it work. The mountains glowed in the evening light.  I felt like you’d feel at home here. Our home is small and comfortable. Our home is warm and full of sound….kid sounds. We like to eat, and tonight you sat at our r...

So here's to a leap of faith and turning another year older. I wrote this story as a challenge to myself several years ago. I've shared it with only a few people--mostly former students who don't have the heart to be critical--knowing how sensitive their old teacher tends to be... I remember sharing it with another friend who asked me what I planned to do with it....I didn't know how to answer, and aside from a few tweaks here and there, it's changed very little since then. I share it now for a few reasons really. One is simply because life is so busy again right now that I find myself grading more papers than I'm writing. When I am writing, I'm writing about library science--which I love--but you wouldn't want to read about, ha! I'm also sharing this today because I am about to turn another year older, and because the purpose of this blog is to get over my insecurities. This story is the one short story I've written--actually wr...