How are you doing, friends? I still fluctuate between extreme anxiety and extreme calm. Right now I'm in a calm phase. Maybe it's the arrival (finally!) of warm weather. The unprecedented (for May in Maine) stretch of sun and dry air. The blossoming of violets and bluets and grape hyacinth in my front yard.
I've also been working on a wriitng project that has kept me away from both my blog and my newsletter and which has involved a deep dive into the past 19 years of my and my children's lives. Perhaps existing in a different timeframe for a few hours each day has a way of insulating me from the present reality.
Oh, yeah, and I have three kids who had birthdays this week. Maybe the extreme contrast of now—with nowhere to go and nothing to do—and a year ago—in the midst of two birthday parties and two graduations, a class trip, and extreme overtime at work, when I took about 18 trips to the store just to find dress pants that fit boys too tall for boys' clothes but too skinny for men's—has resulted in the general aura of calm.
This year's festivities involved a couple of low-key cookouts, eaten outside in slightly too cool temperatures at the octagonal picnic table C built for the occasion, plus special breakfast doughnuts and juice for one day and breakfast panini sandwiches for the other, and some social distanced grandparent time.
Nineteen and fifteen do not seem quite as momentous as eighteen and fourteen did, possibly because of the absense of those parties and the ensuing graduations, or maybe I used up my emotional reserves a year ago. Now what I feel is…a sense unrealness. Like there can't possibly be any connection with those bald little scalps in the pictures above and the giant men who live here.
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