REMEMBER WHEN WE HAD ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD AND ALL WE DID WAS WORRY
It’s a very all-caps feeling day today.
The big fancy candle I won in a drawing on my neighborhood Buy Nothing list is flickering in the corner of the room. By the corner of the room, I mean just over there, a mere 2 feet away. Its flame illuminates the radiator (that doesn’t work) behind it, casting a friendly glow on all the dust bunnies somehow both visible and trapped inside in a way that makes them impossible to clean. Beside that, a lone Nutcracker in need of repair. To the left of him, a potted snake plant, two popsicle stick puppets — googly eyes, yarn hair, felt dresses.
I feel busy. I feel as if suddenly, all I’m doing is running from place to place. Sometimes, an actual place, sometimes it’s from tab to tab on the computer. How does the laundry get done in your house? I want to ask my actually busy friends. Mine is still unfolded, piled lightly on the bed, shirts flattened by cats.
A couple walks behind the girls and I on our way home, a new baby strapped to mom, talking about holiday plans and how they’ll take turns wearing earplugs so that each one will get a chance to sleep when the other is up with the baby I guess. There’s talk about hiring someone to sleep train the baby, to come to their house and work with them through the night. They seemed to have it all figured out. They only have one baby, I thought to myself, only one and it doesn’t even talk yet.
Best part of yesterday was teaching first position to third graders in Bay Ridge. I borrowed the illustrated print out of a very cute tiny dancer and panned the image around the room, remembering now, four workshops into my day, that I’d forgotten to share the fact that ballet originated in France and therefore all of the movements are in the French language. FIRST POSITION it said in all-caps above the drawing. I asked How many of you speak a language in addition to English? Hands shot up around the room: Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Spanish. I asked if anyone wanted to translate it and they did, with joy, some of them with more ease than others, some with eyebrows furrowed, concentrating on how to say it best through their masks. Out of nowhere, there is a feeling of pride decorating the dance studio now, languages floating midair. I like this part so much. The part where my mind works, finally, in the way that it should, firing synapses to sew two ideas together in a millisecond.
I’ve talked myself out of the bedtime despair now. My heart is still aching a little but I can go on, I think.
P.S. I’m new and not sure of what I’m doing here on the ol substack. All of my previous writings can be found by digging around here. If you’d like to subscribe to this one, please do. I promise nothing but a flickering candle flame in your heart.