I have not left my house since Tuesday. This fact bothers me less than it should. Any other time, this would be evidence of illness, or maybe depression. Now it is about the illness I do not have.
My pantry is stocked. Has been stocked. I am the child of a child of Depression-era parents who even in boom times never got more than just comfortable. So when I see canned tuna for forty-five cents at the supermarket, I add to the larder. Just in case.
Time stretches out. I gravitate toward quiet, toward less and less activity. I find myself doing one thing at a time. Being one thing at a time.
I intended to work on my closet while listening to an audiobook. After all, I could do both, so why not? Puritan.
I dumped out the pink rubber bin full of past-life detritus and started filling it with camping gear acquired in the past year, audiobook in my ear. When the bin was repurposed to my satisfaction, I stared at the remnants on the floor. My body tugged at me to leave the closet, to settle into the chaise in the living room. I obeyed. I listened to my book.
Probably I could not have done the book justice while sorting through what still lies in my closet. I look at the baseball hat with fake mullet attached and remember bottomless mimosas and hazy bits of a Rockies game. There’s the case full of 3.5-inch floppy disks. The extra RGB cables, of little use now that everything has gone to HDMI. My ex’s fleece bathrobe his mother made for him when he was a teen. Why do I even have that? It feels too precious to get rid of, but the memory isn’t mine. My home is full of other people’s memories. I have always made space for them. The memories feel more sacred than I do.
My balcony door is open. Someone is crying on a floor below me. The audiobook was a memoir, largely about the author’s relationship with his mother. Her death looms over the narrative. You always know it is coming, through every chapter. It just hasn’t come yet.
Last night I watched an episode of Deep Space Nine where an elderly Jake Sisko tells a young writer about the apparent death of his father, when he was eighteen. Because the series continues with Benjamin Sisko, you know throughout the episode that this timeline will eventually be unwritten, that Ben and Jake will in fact be reunited. A different choice will be made. You know life is coming, but it just hasn’t come yet. There is sacrifice wherever you look.
My mother cannot stay home. She cannot attend to one thing at a time. My father can, but probably won’t. He never worries about the heat of the pan until the blister is already raising on the skin.
I keep looking for a way to unwrite this timeline and I cannot find it. And I know that there will be an end, one way or another. It does not have to be now and probably will not be now. But I don’t know how to ignore what is looming. All I can do is listen.
Called 