Sometimes the time machine appears, magically, without my even calling for it and I am so grateful.
Yesterday
the cell phone said I was running out of voicemail
space, I didn't even know I was saving voicemails so I started deleting
then scrolling backward, how many messages did I have? And I find Nora
again from three years ago, asking me to pick her up at the Rock House
after practice. Her voice is so pipped and high again, she is nearly
chirping. I'm reading the Columbine
book by Dave Cullen (against my greater instincts but the writing is so
damn good and the structure is so marvelous -- how could he take all
this horrific information and make sense out of senselessness but we
will remember and know the victims now, thanks to his work) and he says
the mothers could not stop hugging their surviving kids, even when that
was no longer what the kids needed. I'll never erase these notes.
I
can't sleep until the girls turn out their lights, I just can't, I feel
anxious until they are out of their bathrooms and in bed and one night
it was so late and I hear Nora get back up out of bed and I called out,
"I really wanted to go to yoga tomorrow morning!" which was crazy but
crazy is the name of the game in this kitchen renovation disarray with
all the furniture and boxes and innards of the kitchen and living room
shoved into the front dining room which except for the bedrooms and
baths, is about all the rooms we have in this house. That night I was
trying to sleep on the couch for reasons that are too complicated to get
into and are extensions of the general insanity, but I will say it
could be a refuge of minimalism in this mess, this tan and velvety piece
of furniture left in the empty echoing living room.
Nora
appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the second floor
hall light and said nothing and I called out again, not in beddy-bye
soft voice, oh no, I'm still shouting, "It's midnight! You should be in
bed!" and she comes down the stairs without a word and stands over me
and then says, "Can I sleep with you?" and my fatigued anger crashes
down in ashes on the floor and I open my arms to her and she puts her
head on my shoulder and falls asleep while I breathe in her hair and
wonder wonder at my blessed fortune to have one more night with her
precious self. My child, my dear child, returned to me from the abyss of
sarcasm and annoyance and silence and locked doors and doubt that
separates the mother from her teen daughter. Good night, good night,
amen amen, thank you thank you thank you.
