The office is complete. The mind is faltering. The boy is staying home. The mother is okay enough. The husband is good, good, all right. The world is falling apart. Sleeping dogs lie and, somewhere upstairs a cat pushes a paw through sunlight.
If I practice doing this enough, sitting in space silently, ignoring the technological pulls, I can escape into something else.
A long time ago, I thought there was redemption through writing, that if I could write it well enough, it would all work out for me. Writing equaled readers equaled entry into the elusive world of publishing. I also believed that our democratic system was sturdy, people were generally good, and progress was linear. But now I know that while writing assumes a reader, requires an imagined audience, that potential reader may never find your work. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that your words, like your thoughts, will die with you. Electronic files and websites will disappear. Paper will molder and burn. Progeny, distant relatives, or strangers will toss your work into the dumpster. As for the rest of my naïve beliefs, well. Look at the world now and before.
In my low, self-indulgent moments, I can see how this is the slow ending of so many things. My thoughts, my words, my family. I worry that the boy was born in a time of chaos, upheaval, and disconnection into two families that were slowly dying out. He is the last of us. What pressure he must feel.
But this does not acknowledge the meaning of what we have right now. I sit in a world of beauty, lucky to have the time to think and write if I wish. My family is strong and smart and stable. We share ideas. We laugh. We lack for nothing. So isn’t it enough, in this moment, to enjoy the sound of wind chimes, to feel the wool beneath my feet, to hold my loved ones close and stop worrying about what will be?