Vigil

I dropped my daughter off at school this morning, and as I headed back towards the river, I passed underneath the bridge and through a homeless encampment. It looks like all of the people there got their tents from the same place. They were different colors and slightly different sizes, but they all had the same primary color bottoms and grey swooping overhangs. They were neatly lined up in rows with an occasional shopping cart or tethered dogs to break the line.

That part of the city always makes me feel guilty. I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I’m a convert. Either I acquired the guilt as an adult, or I converted because I had inherited the guilt from distant Catholics ancestors, passed down as a genetic trait, like my brown eyes or my bendy joints.

I feel guilty because of the culture that was destroyed when the interstate was put in place. That interstate makes my life easier, and it destroyed the neighborhood. I feel guilty because I can’t feed everyone who lives there, and I can’t bring their dogs to the vet, even though they clearly need it. I wear guilt around me like a cloak; it weighs me down and makes my steps heavy. Guilt for things that I can impact and guilt for things that I will never touch.

I leave the tents behind and cross the river, still misty in the morning fog. On the Gretna side, there is a hospital, suburban and squat and plain. As hospitals go, it is small. I had a minor surgery done there last year and there was a roach in my room. It smells more like a vet clinic than a medical facility for humans, and some of the equipment is literally fastened to the wall with duct tape. The people are kind though, and efficient. My father-in-law’s needs are met and they are running the right tests.

It is amazing to me how many different blood tests can be done from just a few vials per day. I guess it doesn’t take that much blood to see a microscopic protein or count how many red blood cells are in a square inch on a smear if that’s how they do it. I’m not entirely sure, since I do money, not blood components.

He is alone when I get there — my husband left ten minutes before to catch a quick shower before work. We overlap when we can, but sometimes it is impossible. The room is quiet and the machines hooked up to every inch of his frail chest and arms are unavoidably loud. They beep, hum, vibrate, all to different rhythms, closing my chest and throat as I feel little flutters of panic to the uneven beat. I breathe in, count, breathe out, and sip my coffee. He opens his eyes and sees me, and we commune in peace, breathing gently together.

The observable you

Dear Sana,

You asked me to tell you what I see — what the outside vision of you is. However, to be honest, I am not sure how to do that. I am not outside. We sit on the same sofa, you borrow my shoes and I wear your earrings. My perspective will not be the same as your doctor’s or your teacher’s or your friend’s. For your sake though, I will try.

You are both fragile and indomitable. You grit your teeth and raise your chin, waiting for the cross to follow the jab. You even do that when you are singing.

I can see how tense you are, all the time. Your shoulders are stiff with waiting, and even when you sleep you hold yourself still, almost rigid, waiting for the dizziness, anticipating a fall, flinching against the noises that might send you into nausea again.

You are pale with black caverns for eyes, or expertly made up with a hint of pain and wariness beneath the perfectly blended eye shadow.

You are angry and brittle with the softest lilting voice to belie your rage.

When you are dizzy, you lurch through the room like a car being driven by a child. Your limbs flail and you careen into walls and sofas, holding yourself up by stretching your arms till you reach the next milestone. Your arms carry your legs.

Sometimes you curse and keen, when the pain is bad. It used to be that you only cried for the little hurts. Now everything is a little hurt and you save the tears for the moments that you feel you can’t go on.

But, my love, you always go. You go on. You breathe through the fears and fight the chaos in your head. You persevere.

Love, Mom.

Monday

There’s really no reason for me to feel sad and empty today. It wasn’t any worse than usual or any more of a Monday than the last 3000 Mondays have been. But here I am, frustrated. Driving home alone, wondering if there is any real purpose to what I do.

I know there is a purpose to parenting. I understand that, but I am hard-pressed to articulate what that purpose is. Most of the time I feel like no matter what I say to my children they are not hearing me anyway. They are what they are, and seem uninfluenced by my opinions and thoughts.

I do not think that I have changed the world in any way, other than by giving birth to two children who are good and wonderful and pure and special because of what they are, not because of what I have made them. I fine tune them, sanding off the rough bits, but I did not form them.

I feel as though life is no more than watching dishes that will be dirtied again and again by eating food that is bland and nutritious and mostly dull.

I hear myself talking and know that this is likely a sign of some sort of depression, but I do not feel depressed. I do not feel any different than I did yesterday or will tomorrow. There will be little spots of brilliance shining through the clouds of course, but the ultimate impact will be unchanged.

I need to be fed with conversation and thought and art. I am hungry.

I long for tomorrow to be different. I want to walk outside of my front door and find a new path leading through the grass that brings me to a new place that I’ve never been before. I want to travel — to taste new things and to smell new scents and to believe again that at the end of the day something, some step that I took made a difference to someone somewhere.

But there will be no path. There will be no new grass and no new air and only another day of my voice falling to the ground and breaking unheard. There will be an endless supply of Mondays, and not enough Fridays. And I will walk to my car with my children, and drive off for another day of life as it really is, not as I would like it to be.