One for the kids

My littler guy has an ear infection so we are using this plate I made some time ago for his post-antibiotic palate cleansing jello eating. This may seem insensitive. I assure you, it is not.

I am going to write this essay.  I have been struggling with it.  All week long. Maybe longer. The thread of logic is unspooling slowly, I am trying to keep pace, to hold it and go where it leads me. I’ve almost worked it out. I’m really almost there.  But I keep watching the video below obsessively.  I have literally sent it to 400 people–in the newsletter and then via email and text.  Then I posted it to Facebook. I identify with the guy in the yellow jacket.  I’m jealous to pieces of Lazy Harp Seal. Why does he have it so good? Here I am slogging away, and this asshole is just so damn cute and fuzzy, happy in the snow and the cold water. The orcas are gunning for him like all hell but he’s oblivious. There’s pee on the snow but he’s not worried.

Sometimes I just hate being human. This is not what I normally say to you. It may disappoint. Maybe you have come to expect me to celebrate being human?  Or love my vulnerabilities?  Treasure the small things that make life so beautiful?  Marvel at the expansion of my mind? Well, sorry.

I hate that I can’t do everything that I want to do and that I can’t save everyone I want to save and that writing is so much damn work and that I still feel guilt over things that are eleven years old and that I still wake up in the middle of the night with realizations that are so obvious I hate myself for not having understood them without the agony of scrawling gibberish in my journal for days.  I hate not being as thin as I want to be and then more than anything I hate that I care about that. I can’t stand caring about all these things that I should by now be able to accept or have transcended caring about because it’s all pointless stupid human stuff anyway. Who cares about the particulars of my life, about my various hungers and desires and misshapen aches?  Me. That’s who.

Thursday night, I began reading Judith Viorst’s book of children’s poetry, If I Were In Charge of the World to my little sick darling.  There is something wonderful about being mildly sick, and about having a mildly sick kid.  We get to slide into these extreme roles–here’s this pathetic sweet creature who just needs me to sit beside him. Here’s this set of problems I can solve–he wants water, jello, soup, ibuprofen?  Those are tangible needs.  His fever will go up and down, I can measure it, see that he’s getting well or worse. I can lend him the softness and warmth of my body, and it is right. I can just sit here beside him and be doing my job perfectly. He and I wrote to this prompt this morning–If I were in charge of the world. Just a simple, specific list poem. Whoever Sara Steinberg is, I’m over her too. With his permission, I’ll post his poem as well in a bit (he’s in first draft stage). But if you have some little homies you’re snowed in with, share this one with them (and the video too).

Viorst (of Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad Day fame) opens the collection with this title poem:

IF I WERE IN CHARGE OF THE WORLD

If I were in charge of the world
I’d cancel oatmeal,
Monday mornings,
Allergy shots, and also
Sara Steinberg.

If I were in charge of the world
There’d be brighter night lights,
Healthier hamsters, and
Basketball baskets forty-eight inches lower.

If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn’t have lonely.
You wouldn’t have clean.
You wouldn’t have bedtimes.
Or “Don’t punch your sister.”
You wouldn’t even have sisters.

If I were in charge of the world
A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts
would be a vegetable.
All 007 movies would be G.
And a person who sometimes forgot to brush,
And sometimes forgot to flush,
Would still be allowed to be
In charge of the world.

I’m kidding.  I love you, Harp Seal.  It’s just a little complicated.