Written May 2019
I’m back at the library where I used to come and write while my oldest had academy one afternoon a week. Someone tried to blow it up in the fall in our privileged, white person town: no joke. It’s been closed while they worked on repairing the car parkade and cleaned each and every thing in the whole building. It feels shiny and new and people aren’t used to it being open again. The parkade is deserted and I have no problem finding a reading cubby where I open my computer and try to think of some words to write. I wonder how many people are scared it may happen again, even though the white male who brought the bomb died. I think it’s important for me to point that out because I know many people when they think of bombing think about minority immigrants. This man was no immigrant and he was no minority: he grew up around here, on a farm I think. Anger and hatred and lack of connection and empathy don’t often care where you grew up, in fact I would argue they are more prevalent in a privileged group who considers themselves to be persecuted.
I’m doing my morning pages in my journal still most days and most days those are all the words I have time to get down. Midlife is beautiful and glorious and also busy. We live somewhere where two incomes are certainly nice to have, if not almost necessary so I’m trying to cram as much paid work in as I can, while also homeschooling three kids, running another business and managing things like flooding basements, broken wells and getting groceries. I don’t work anywhere close to full time for pay - more like 1/5 time when things are really busy but all the work I do not for money, especially choosing to homeschool add up, especially with a husband who travels extensively for work.
Things that are on my mind right now are things I don’t really want to share about on the internet. What it’s like to have a house full of kids turning into teenagers, what it is like to raise a competitive athlete, how our life seems bananas but yet I cannot imagine it any other way. How to educate my kids for high school. How I don’t want my kids to be a part of teen cell phone culture and they aren’t but then also the effects of them not being a part of it. The positive and the negative. I’m wondering about how to raise younger siblings who feel just as accomplished (read loved) when your oldest is incredibly driven. On how this morning I found lily beetles for the first time in my yard and how climate change means two of my apple trees and my one plum didn’t get any blossoms on them at all. At how I feel sick at the amount of plastic we are throwing away yet I still really want to eat berries and go for a slurpee without having reusable cups on us. How girls are almost expected to post ridiculous photos of themselves online and how my middle dances with girls older than her and how I’m not sure how I feel about that these days. The difference between 11 and 13 can be extreme. How I feel guilt that some of my kids seem permanently altered by the fact that I had cancer during their childhood. If there is anything I can do about it. On my incredible sadness at seeing the actions of my sons black teammates being more likely to interpreted as aggressive or hostile or with intent than my white, blond, blue eyed son’s are and how I don’t know how to change it or the many other discriminations his minority teammates face that he doesn’t.
On my mind is how when the trees turn from all brown to the first tinges of chartruse green anything is possible. How growing flowers makes you feel like you are doing a tiny bit to save the world, even if logically it makes no sense. How at this point I am actively doing less to save the world than I have at any other point in my life and how just for now I am not trying to change that. Wondering if that makes me apathetic, privilidged or just in need of a bit of rest.
