miriam beth

i am writing this on the back patio. this is like my little office. my place. it is where i have turned a cement-and-cinder-block screened “room” into a refuge, a place of peace. it is also where the washing machine and the dryer are. there is only so much a girl can do with what she’s given and moving the plumbing to find a new place (where there isn’t one, really) for laundry isn’t within her capabilities. 

oh well. 

the world is still going crazy. or to hell in a hand basket. or just turning upside down, which i initially wanted to write but that just makes me think of hamilton and how the world turned upside down when the americans defeated the british and what an unbelievable triumph that was this covid-era living with everyone wringing their hands and crying about disease and masks and equality and democrats and republicans and racism and child trafficking and the dangers of pornography? it does not feel like an unbelievable triumph. it feels like we’ve given up and we’ve hired professional mourners to mark the event. 

it began with me in a chemistry class and my children all holding laptops and lining up to ask me what i thought their teachers meant when they assigned the particular assignment they were working on and did they do it right and also how do you submit things on google classroom and oh by the way when is lunch? we are starving. i was miley cyrus on a wrecking ball, but i was clothed and not nearly as graceful. i swung about, occasionally crashed into things. sometimes i was laughing. sometimes i was crying. sometimes i took a nap in the afternoon. 

and it has not ended. even though it is five months later and we have finished a school year, endured/enjoyed a summer, and are ramping up for the school year but we are still at school and i am trying to figure out where i put children for school so they are not a distraction but also not too secluded so they pay attention and also stop holding the animals, children. your teacher needs your attention and your future needs you to hang on so you can have one worthy of your abilities. 

there are four loads of laundry, waiting to be folded out here on this little patio, and a little fuzzy faced bunny that we cannot stop hugging and holding. an old IKEA chair, an old IKEA couch. pillows. blankets. a coffee table made of reclaimed wood and a shelf made from a bowling alley floor. plants, plants, plants, plants, and the gentle hum of my dryer, churning out yet another load of laundry for me to fold. 

i am a mother on a mission: make this semester a good one. 

the children want to be in school. they learn better in school. we are a society in the middle of “the world’s most underwhelming pandemic” (tara said that. tara is a clever and a genius. and Tara is correct). but they cannot. so i will keep them home and try to understand how i can best engage them. do i read to them in the afternoons? or take them out to climb a mountain? do i leave them alone to decompress, or bring out board games and play some loud music? and how do i care for myself? how do i make sure i am not glassy eyed and fragile at the end of a day where i have remained available? 

i can run an errand by myself. read a book. escape to the patio. this is literally how i've made it thus far.

i think i am tired. i think i am overwhelmed. i think I am making up for all of this by skimming the walls of my house and putting new throw pillows on the couches. if the world outside is dangerous, i will make this world inside safe. i will make it comfortable. i will be available, even if it kills me. 

but first, i will fold some laundry. 

what choice do i have?