hi/lo
The best part was taking a broom and sweeping magnolia petals into a big pile. In late morning, when the sun came out, I opened the door to…
The best part was taking a broom and sweeping magnolia petals into a big pile. In late morning, when the sun came out, I opened the door to the garden and got to sweeping. I swept, while the petals fell around me. The action of sweeping is one my body knows well, but there a particular joy of sweeping outside. I laughed a little because even while I was sweeping, the petals kept falling. The sun got hot quick and I took off my sweatshirt, felt the sun on my wintered arms. I pulled the petals into a one pile and found a plastic bag into which to transfer the petals to the compost. This felt good.
The worst part was when I realized that this experience was likely taking a toll on my children’s mental health. I’d been feeling confident that the kids were pretty resilient about the whole thing, but this afternoon, I wasn’t so sure. One kid was screaming about an imaginary injury/the other was whining about [pick a subject]. We seem to have hit a wall and are now cruising on some kind of quarantine plateau where the weight of indoor life has pressed us down into condensed unlikeable versions of ourselves. Patience is in short supply and when we sit at dinner, we have to beg the girls to try not to talk and talk about the plots or characters in the shows they’ve just watched. We haven’t seen those shows and we want to talk about different things, we remind them. Oh, to be out! To go out! To see something different and not on a screen! Oh! To have something to talk about other than True and the Rainbow Kingdom!
The sun can also be like a slap in the face.