the winter of our discontent
it’s been the sort of month where nothing is comfortable. my shoes pinch. my kitchen chairs squeak, rock, break apart. my toothbrush is mushy. my skin itches: it’s too tight, it’s not the right size, it doesn’t fit me, it cracks. i’ve been desperate to unzip and step outside myself, hand someone my heart and kidneys and ask them to watch them for a second, just a second, while i go somewhere else. anywhere else.
does it ever get to you like that? this everything? where you feel like every ribosome and mitochondrion inside of you is running amok? where you must get out or dry up like egyptian bones and sink into a lapis lazuli sky painted on the lid of your sarcophagus?
it gets to me.
there aren’t many solutions in the middle of a blizzard sodden cleveland. i did the best i could. i tied on my boots, found a scarf, and left. i didn’t pull a nora from ibsen’s a doll’s house, but i wanted to. i wondered how it would feel to just walk away from feeding people dinner and cleaning up smashed bits of everything from the carpet and chasing tiny hands away from the stove and never look back.
but all i did was walk. i walked through the evening that was sharp with snow and garlic, counting the things that i could change: the list was short and i felt like sinking into the snow at my feet and letting it bury me. i walked for a long time. breathing. pushing through the drifts. looking up into the blackness of the night.
and i saw something. it had bright eyes that flashed in the street lights. it was leaping through the drifts. a smallish cat, i thought. i watched it propel itself through the snow. leaping. pushing and pulling its paws through powder. almost graceful. and then i got close enough to see its tail, a long and hairless fleshy salmon pink. it was a rat. a giant rat hunting for shelter in the storm.
if rats can leap through blizzards…
Filed under cleveland, life |6 Responses to “the winter of our discontent”
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I feel your pain, but the way you write it makes it so much more depressing, the rat topped it off and by the end I was laughing at the insane place we live.
suffocation is normal in motherhood. i strongly believe that instead of baby showers we should hold vigils. honor the death of the great person you used to be and recognize that from then on, n o t h i n g is the same. like you said, you have to realize how little you control and cling on to it like a crazy monkey.
good for you for getting out. scary scary rat story.
Okay, way gross that you saw a rat jumping through the air near your house. Just remember, the summers in Cleveland are awesome
O, yes I know. I think I have the flue or something that is making my head hurt, my longs ache and my eyes see double. But I am still at work (being the Mom), when is my day off where is my sick leave? And I think the rat probably lives under my old apartment. I think I used to hear them down there having tea parties and telling jokes to each other.
ps- this is beautiful, I had to read it agian today because I think its so great. Write more please.
i think the rat was coming to join the party of his friends in my backyard. i can’t even start tot tell you how i feel about rats and their nasty tails.