homemade time: saturday

This morning I went to pick up Frances from a slumber party.

She wants everyone to call her Frankie now. When she corrects me, I explain to her that a habit of ten and a half years is not easily broken. Also that we picked her name, and it is absolutely perfect for her. Despite this, she has convinced most of the people in her life to switch it up.

I found a modest-sized gap along the curb and began parallel parking our minivan. My entry was atrocious and I had to inch back and forth. Once parked, I climbed into the back to unbuckle Beatrice and then ducked out with her on the street side, as we were parked so close to a hedge on the driver/sidewalk side that we would have had to climb under it to escape.

Maybe I should embrace my limited parallel parking skill as something unique and wonderful about me. Right? My trouble with spatial relationships is a gift. It allows me to empathize with a certain kind of artist, poet, space cadet. Or I might at least accept it, and try not to get too embarrassed when I see another parent nearby on the sidewalk, also on his way to pick up, watching me wrench the wheel all the way this way, and then all the way that way, an expression comprising equal parts wince and smile frozen on his face.

His look mirrored my own it's-just-too-much feeling when, after all that, I climbed out the opposite back door. I said hi. I mentioned that I feel like a disaster. Ha ha. I started walking down the slumber party street, carrying Beatrice who refused to walk, and then realized I had no idea which door to knock on.

I had to call back to him. What's the house number??

(I have to ask for help even when I feel like I shouldn't have to ask for help. I have to ask for help all the time. I am meeting people this year, and becoming part of their lives, and this is the only me they know.)

I walked into a marvelously chaotic scene, a jumble of shoes that seemed far too big for Frances and her friends, bags and stuffed animals and pillows piled by the door, lots of gangly funny girls joking about how they are simply unable to go home. The birthday girl's mother asked me, innocently, what we were doing this weekend.

My mind went blank. What is the proper response to that question again? I thought. I thought about Mike, so sick at home. I thought about how I didn't know if we should call the on-call oncologist about his symptoms. After a too-long pause, I replied, in upspeak, as if I were a nervous twenty year old on my first interview: I think we're going ... to the library?

Readers, I refer you to my last post for more on how treacherous the waters of casual social interaction have become.

Holy moly. Then another parent, a friend, walked in. We chatted for a little while just inside the door while the girls reported on how late they'd stayed up. He asked about Mike. I said he was really sick. I explained a little. Radiation recall. My friend looked at me with genuine care in his eyes and said, please give him a hug from me.

And then, shamelessly, I began tearing up (as I am wont to do), lurched over a sleeping bag, and went right in for my own hug. He wasn't really offering me one, but he rolled with it.

See? I have to ask for help all the time. I ask for help without even asking. In the beginning I thought maybe this humbling practice, having to be aware of my own vulnerability and dependence on others, would be spiritually transformative. Or something. Now I'm not sure.

Everything feels hard in part because I expected our burdens to lighten this month, but so far they only seem heavier. We were ready to turn a corner, but despite the inclination of our hearts, Mike's body seems to be drawn backwards, towards the radiation nightmare that we thought was behind us.

It's interesting that despite their capacity to drive me bonkers, and despite my occasionally feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for them every dang day, right now the children offer me a kind of paradoxical respite. Safety, normalcy. Sleepovers, whining, piano practice, stories. I can't make Mike's throat heal, but I do make a mean peanut butter sandwich. Kissing a bumped head is a simple gesture that I can approach with satisfaction and pleasure and confidence.

So I leave you with this series of photos from bedtime tonight. Beatrice sang me a storytelling song about Baltimore, and falling down, and gold digging (a little Kanye in the car this morning), and some other stuff in a language only she understands. It was so dramatic, so big and bright and hilarious, I had to let her go on and on, straight into wired overexhaustion. It was just so fun.