Sometimes (there’s that).
Terrifying Scandinavian straw goat. This has no relevance to anything I’ve written here. But these things terrify me. Mostly because of The Wicker Man. The original. Not the Nic Cage one.
There’s this :
Sometimes you lose something important.
Like a micro SD card at a park containing a week of video you’ve shot of your children doing things like throwing a Christmas party in their room, zooming around in a cardboard sleigh, and dancing to Justin Bieber with their mom.
And sometimes your wife discovers a plumbing leak in the bathroom at 11pm and you pull everything apart and sop the water up and hope the profanity in your head doesn’t manifest itself as the raging screams you’d like to manifest those feelings as, because that would wake the young children up.
Sometimes the children wake up anyway, and crawl into your bed, and you can no longer turn over and your back is extra achy.
Sometimes your daughter beats you at UNO and then gloats about it. Twice.
And sometimes - all the time these days - Costco has samples FOR YOU TO LOOK AT.
Again : Costco has samples for you to look at.
“You can’t eat them,” she explained. “We have them out in case you forgot what you enjoyed eating last year, so you can buy them again.”
I get it. Pandemics and such. Ick. But still.
And also sometimes, there’s six loads of laundry to fold and put away.
And also that :
Sometimes there’s a sunset. And it’s pretty.
Sometimes you find great joy in the right sequencing of certain songs, and you share that joy with your sister:
1. Run the Jewels “Walking in the Snow”
2. Peter Paul & Mary “This Train”
3. The Strokes “The Modern Age”
(mainly the guitar solo, which is one of the best of this century)
4. Antlers “No Widows”
5. Bon Iver “Blood Bank”
6. Phoebe Bridgers “I Know the End”
7. Kings of Leon “Over” (as loud as possible, please)
Sometimes one child, and then another wants to wrestle, and eventually you’re pinned down and it’s uncomfortable, but it’s not the discomfort that comes from being sprawled on by the same bodies during the night when you’re trying to sleep, so you laugh. And it feels good to keep doing it.
Sometimes you walk in on a quiet living room and there are two kids buried in books, and you take three more steps and there are two different kids scribbling art like there’s no tomorrow, and wait a few minutes, and there’s a shuffling of assignments and…those things make my heart pump better.
Sometimes your 10-year old keeps showing you the new Mitch McConnell political illustration he’s doing and you fight to keep your pride at a manageable level and convey to him in a steady voice that “…it’s pretty good.” Note: it’s really good. Nick Anderson might agree.
Sometimes you have long tough teary talks with a 3-year old, which is the most agonizing thing in the world to him (as well as to his older siblings, and younger sibling), and the ending is this : arms thrown around your neck and squeezing so tight, so tight, and you can feel the anxieties and the difficulties and the tough times evaporating away…
…but of course they’re not evaporated.
They’re not evaporated, but the world’s in a bit better balance, and maybe tipped a gram or two in the optimal direction. So there’s that, and I’ll take it.
Jean jacket-clad lad waiting for his mum to arrive home. A ritual he is a part of whenever she is gone, regardless the weather or external circumstances.
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