I thought my anxiety was out of control.
My gut was a mess. I nearly poisoned myself on too much psyllium fiber powder in an attempt to get my bowels restarted. I was gradually eliminating a medication that was supposed to help deal with my “chronic dysphoria” and instead added a level of “general grossness” to my well being that didn’t seem an equal trade off, given the lack of evidence of any increase in positive mood.
It was the beginning of the lockdown and I was slow to process all the world’s grief, taken upon me like a mantle in the late hours, all the rage at my country’s governance and its inability to communicate one iota of empathy for human suffering.
And so ended the longest Lenten season of my entire life. All the emotions of global fear, social anxiety, loneliness, limited movement, suspiciousness toward others, lack of spontaneous human contact – these began during Lent and the calendar’s Easter didn’t liberate our lives from their new stringencies. And then on the hardest day, Good Friday, the day of silence and bleakness and utter loneliness, I tinkle on a stick and discover that another little child is growing within. I have traded a chocolate-less waiting season for another long uncomfortable waiting of hopes and fears, this one also measured in forty, but seven times the length of Lent. I had almost started to feel like my grownup life might restart; the WordPlay show rehearsal felt like brilliance and people seemed to want to listen to my story and my voice again. Covid-19 cancelled all of that and now, weeks later, the microscopic appearance of Junior Three extends my timeline for grownup goals – what I sometimes call “having an actual personality” – into the future for another two to four years, depending on the temperament of this next child. So I am on joyful hold again. Waiting. Just waiting, in every area of life.
But this pregnancy will be different because now I am a writer: my practices are always lacking, some days they are simply not there at all, but for the first time in my life I can say: I do this; that it anchors me to the world and myself and my emotions. The practice of writing is finally permanent and no amount of morning sickness or desperation napping will change the fact that I write because I am. So perhaps a chronicle of bringing this child to term will come in handy at some other time.
After dark and the children are sleeping I kneel beside the bin of chicks, holding each for a few quiet moments. The buffs are calm, weightless, the softness of their fluff so ethereal that I have to look at my hands cupping them to actually feel the downiness of their bodies. They don’t peep much in my hands; one nods lower and lower and eventually falls asleep as I stroke her neck with my thumb. This is a good time to have something small and cheerful depending on you for simple necessities: food. Heat. Water no one has pooped in.
Later when we should already be in bed, The Hubs gets a notification on his phone: freeze alert. We stagger about gathering supplies, sheets, trash bags, head lamps, coats and boots. Outside there is a nearly full moon hanging in the crisp sky. It was a frustrating day, the sun not showing its face until after 6 pm, bright and glorious just in time to go down along the horizon in melted pools of pinks and oranges. My oldest hangs off of his top bunk to see the sunset through the curtain I have pulled back at bedtime; even my two year old seems to know that its beauty is important. This nearly sunless day has given way to a clear night, freezing cold, and we are covering up tomatoes, cauliflower, celery, eggplant. Hopefully only once this season. Being out in the moonlit yard makes me long for warmer moons, family togetherness in the woods and wilds, reminding me of a time just last year when life seemed easier, more straightforward, more assuredly beautiful with fewer complications.
Indoors again we are gasping from the cold, and the bin of chicks emits peeps and chirps and warmth. I am trying to take life as it comes – freezes in May, waves of nausea, headlines and death tolls, news of my father’s emergency surgery – because each moment right now is worth feeling. To shut it out risks catastrophe later, an overflow when I need to stay calm, a leakage when my children might be unprotected from the effects of my adult uncertainty.
The chicks are grounding me. The boys, always. The new life, grape sized and floating, is a tangible link to an intangible future. Tenuous also, but one has to hope beyond the uncertainty to plan a life of warmth and beauty and joy. So I will make some small plans this cold night, and then I will gladly surrender my body to sleep.
There is a second freeze, a second rush to cover things, but the plants don’t survive the snow and wind. They weren’t surviving in the house either, where the youngest child watered several with spray cleaner from under the kitchen sink and there wasn’t enough sun coming through the back window. I look at the liquefied blobs of tomato plants and sigh. Snow in May in the midst of a global pandemic feels so very heavy.
