On Google Docs, where I am drafting this, there is really no such thing as a blank screen with a blinking, expectant cursor. Instead, when you open a blank document a series of prompts fade on and off the page: “Try ‘@email draft’ to add an email draft template,” “Try ‘@checklist’ to start a checklist,” and, cryptically, “Try ‘@name’ to insert a people smart chip” (I don’t know what a “people smart chip” is, but I’m sure if Google is just casually suggesting adding them into Google Docs, they can’t be nearly as nefarious and clandestine as they sound, right? Or maybe they are exactly that because Google is the most proficient at extracting our innermost thoughts with nothing more than a magnifying glass icon and a blank search bar. Just Googled “people smart chip” and, according to Google, they’re just a handy way to label relevant people in documents. Which is maybe a little clandestine and nefarious because labeled people can then be emailed, messaged, video called, and invited to contribute to said document, which, I don’t know about anybody else, feels a little invasive and controlling? Like at any moment you can be smart chipped and suddenly feel obliged to offer feedback or ideas to some project or, worse, show up at a meeting? Don’t they know I have Reels of dog voice overs to watch?! I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, the internet is a horrible place.)
Where were we? Ah yes, do you see how Google expertly managed my anxiety about writing on the internet for the first time since December? And it didn’t even need to deploy any of those soothing videos where people make tiny scenes out of felted wool and animate them with stop motion. The internet is a magical place.
It is August. Back in June as the school year was winding down I had expected to spend my summer catching up on creative pursuits. I would make another bottle cap project or two, design my next tattoo, maybe write some poetry. I had hoped to return to writing essays, too. Especially after telling most of my students over the course of the year that essay writing could be fun and that one day they might actually enjoy doing it. But summer began as a sprint. I had my last class for grad school to complete, the neighborhood newsletter to publish, helping out with the swim team, three children who needed attention and entertainment and, of course Ruthie, our now-7-month-old puppy, who, when left to her own devices, chooses destruction.
The summer has flown by and today is the first time I’ve even faced the blinking cursor on a blank screen.
I would be lying to say that time has been the only factor in my absence. I underestimated how all-consuming teaching is. How easy it is for it to swallow your whole being. Even when I’m not at school, I’m thinking about it. The next lesson to plan, the grading, the IEP meetings to prepare for, the data to collect, the progress reports to write, the parents to contact, etc., etc., etc.. There is no mental break. Especially with three kids at home. And a husband who has felt neglected. And grad school. From 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. it’s just a series of sprints. Reading back this paragraph it actually seems kind of absurd to me that I have been doing all of these things at once for the past two and a half years. Like I’m just one little person. Trying to balance an entire mountain on my back.
It’s no wonder I’ve been avoiding blank pages. Empty canvases. Creativity feels like another task. At a certain point this year I sort of jettisoned it as a priority. It was too painful. And there was no time. And I’m a teacher now, not an artist. We don’t really live in a society that makes room for multiple identities, do we?
And anyway, I’m an expert at compartmentalizing. Somewhere in my 41 years bumbling around this place, I found that my overflowing fountain of feelings and emotions seemed to be a bit unwieldy and unwelcome to the rest of the world. They aren’t real convenient and maybe a little bit embarrassing. Like how can you go around representing humanity with all your tears and self-righteous indignation? Not when there are jobs to do. Needs to be met. Not when everyone else needs to go on life-ing all around me. So I’ve gotten really good at popping those feelings into a box and putting that box on a shelf in a closet and then closing the closet doors, maybe forever.
The thing I’m realizing though, as this screen slowly fills, is that I feel like I’ve had to give up some of my humanity. I’ve become so task oriented in order to survive that the little glowing ember of my soul has been deprived of oxygen. A person that I love describes herself as being like this dried out husk. Like life and all its pain has gutted her. Like there is nothing left inside and she’s this hardened shell. And I know what she means. When there is an expectation – whether it’s internal or external- that a person is to function at high levels nonstop without room to rest or feed the things beyond their basic physical needs, then they become mechanized, right? No more than cogs. In a way, we are no different than the technology that underpins our day-to-day life. Always on, always ready to perform a task. Always expected to function. And easy to replace when things get laggy.
And I feel that.
A few weeks ago, I was cleaning the downstairs bathroom. When I turned around I found a dead mouse floating in the cat’s water bowl. I screamed, I was caught so off guard. I had an internal tantrum about it all. I didn’t want to deal with the dead mouse. I didn’t want to have to interact with its wet, limp little body. One more mess to clean up. One more reminder of how tender life is. How did it end up in the bathroom? In the water? Where was I going to put it?
Always when I’d find other dead creatures in our house or in the yard- birds, bunnies, mice that a cat or dog has killed. I buried them. I apologized to them. Acknowledged their pain. Honored their lives. If there was something in bloom, I crowned their little graves with flowers. And here is what I mean when I say my inconvenient extra-ness. Right? Because it’s just a mouse. It’s just a bird. Things die all the time. The way my neighbor looked at me and rolled his eyes when I rescued that bee from the pool only to get stung. The bee was going to die anyway. Why bother? Like maybe I was being sanctimonious. Even if it was only that I thought drowning would be a scary way to die, even if it was just a bee. Where else do I find my humanity? If it isn’t scooping a drowning bee out of the pool, where is it?
With this mouse though, I was just so tired. So over all of it. What difference did it make, what I did with this moues? It was so hot that day. And the mosquitoes always biting. I got a plastic bag and put it in the garbage. Like it was trash. I can picture it still. And still I have guilt. For not having honored the mouse, and by extension giving up just another part of myself that feels true. Not feeding the little glowing ember.
I don’t expect other people to be like this. I don’t judge other people for throwing the mouse out or avoiding the drowning bee or swatting at the flies. I know it’s too much. And I’m not suggesting I’m better than anyone in any way. It’s not like that. What I am saying is that, I think we all have, in some form, these moments like this. These dumb little choices we make about how we are going to be in this world. How we interact with it. And I guess I’m wondering, how can we better feed our little embers? What does it take to get us to tend to them?
What made me feed my ember today, what brought me to this blank page was a series of events stretching across hours, days, months, and probably years. It was the mouse I left in the trash pile. The long walk I took this morning without headphones playing music, or podcasts, or audiobooks. It was watching two sunrises over the Atlantic last week listening to the waves all relentless, insistent, reassuring, unfaltering. How the steadfastness of the ocean always moves me. Like I’m going home. It was the garden full of Monarch caterpillars in May that ended with just one Monarch butterfly in June. It was “How to Do Nothing” and “Ways of Being” and “Barbie.” It was Annie’s wrinkled nose. Lily waiting for the end of the swim relay to rescue a bumble bee. Desperately wanting to preserve Jovie’s tenderness. It was a devastating text thread last Wednesday. How my sister stopped a fistfight between strangers at the Snoop Dogg concert on Tuesday because she couldn’t bear to see anyone hurt. It was Brad’s heart attack two years ago. It was the way my student’s eyes filled with tears and how, because she’s mute, she couldn’t share the words for her pain.
It’s been a difficult week. My closet full of carefully stacked and stowed boxes has been capsized. And I’m left to sort out my mess. And, yes, of course, I’m fine. And also, I’m not fine. And no, I’m not going into the details here (Lest you worry, nobody is dead or dying (that I know of)).
Here’s something I found in the rubble:
The other day, the birds in the yard were in a state- sparrows, cat birds, and jays all raising an alarm that danger was afoot. I found Ruthie, our puppy, running around the yard with a bird in her mouth. She stopped periodically to drop it. Then she’d pick it up again and flip it in the air. I saw its wing flap feebly at one point. I demanded that Ruthie drop it, over and over. Chased her around the yard. Every time I’d get close, she’d sprint away. I got treats and threw them to her to distract her. But she was not deterred. Eventually, she tired out. I brought her inside and was left with another small creature to tend to.
The bird was dead. A baby cat bird.
I knew this time I wasn’t going to throw it in the trash. It was hot. The mosquitoes were biting. I found a shovel and dug a hole under the lilac. Put on my gardening gloves and scooped up its tiny, limp body and laid it in the hole. I apologized profusely and wept. I plucked two black-eyed Susans, tucking one underneath a wing and placing the second on top of the little burial mound.
Life here is so damn short. It’s fleeting. And there is so much pain. Entering middle age, it feels as if this thickening of skin, this toughening and hardening is inevitable. Like to survive I will always have to throw the mouse out with the trash. Like there is no time or space for my earnestness here. My urge to create. All my feelings. They’re frivolous.
But they’re not. And maybe that’s what this stage of life is here to remind me. It’s out of these moments of gutting despair and hardness that we are reminded to stoke our fire. To protect that precious ember. Our humanity is at stake.
And because I’m self-conscious and a little embarrassed, I’ll apologize for being so ardent and a lot. Too much really. Google made me do it.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m also a feel-too-much, save-the-bee, bury-the-bird middle ager. It often feels like too much and not enough all at once. But also maybe like the most honest time in my life? Here’s hoping you can get a little down time, whatever that means for you.
reading these words, it’s as if you were looking into my heart, at my own tiny ember, to say *namaste*
i offer, by way of sharing, a song that seems fitting: https://youtu.be/654sikYivck
Oh, you have such a beautiful soul.