 |
| Just out of frame: Dorothy's house on its way to Oz. Or maybe it's a portal through time. Or to Asgard! |
Me: Hey, John! Come look at this funnel cloud!
John: What?! [comes outside] Wow! That's sure swirling around fast.
Me: Do you think I'll get hit by lightning if I stay out here on the porch?
John [in his patronizing scientist voice]: Considering that we live on a hill, and you're the least tall thing around, no.
Buoyed by his logic, I stayed outside snapping photos until the torrential rains arrived seconds later. At least the rain refreshed the pansies I left to die of heat stroke on the deck. Garden update: all plants are fine. Of course, the only plants in the raised bed that I have so far are the withered (but alive!) beets and parsley I planted more than two weeks ago, and some shoots that I'm telling myself are kale (but are probably something insidiously weedy). The tomato starts are doing fine and dandy inside the greenhouse, which miraculously didn't blow away in the storm. I can count the number of mosquito bites I've received on only one hand, so for all intents and purposes, this gardening season is a resounding success!
Theo has been sick for the past couple of days. He's had a sporadic fever, and still hasn't recovered his appetite, and earlier this afternoon I noticed an almost imperceptible rash over his torso and face. We rejoiced over the couple of bites of guacamole he nibbled at tonight. Avocados (see, there's no plural "e" here – what gives with the "e" in tornadoes? It makes it seem like a tornadoes are a tomatoes-rich Mexican torpedo dish or something) form a fair portion of his solid food diet. I'm sure when he's a teenager eating us out of house and home, I'll look back to this time of picky eating as the halcyon days of being able to afford to feed my kid. But I wish he would eat a pound of butter and put my mind at ease about his growth.
Between the sick kid and the recent shootings in Seattle, my mind hasn't been at ease at all of late. I didn't know any of the victims, but of course in a city that small, I know someone who knew them. Someone who happened to decide not to grab coffee at Café Racer before work that morning; so by the grace of a random or semi-conscious decision, thus avoided being there when the shooting happened.
A tragedy like this makes me think of lots of things, all running on the extreme end of the anxiety and worry spectrum. One of my deepest fears when I was pregnant was that Theo would, despite all our efforts, grow up to be someone without the capacity for empathy. I'm not saying that's what the case was with the Seattle shooter, but in addition to worrying about whether my child will be mentally healthy and empathetic as an adult, I worry about him randomly and tragically coming into contact with someone who isn't.
I can't prepare for randomness. Whenever we part ways for the day or for the hour, I can't help but tell John that I love him. I wear this phrase like a talisman to ward off the chaos and randomness that the world might throw at us. I say it, I mean it, I say it again, though I know it can't protect us. When he rides his bike to and from school, I automatically think of the drunk drivers on Goldstream, or the blinding light of the setting sun and that narrow spot on the road near Ivan's Alley. Even now, by typing these words, I hope that somehow by naming my fear, I'll stop it from coming true.
Sometimes, always, I wish I could invent a way to send a text back through time (I'm assuming that sending information like this would be a hell of a lot easier than time traveling myself). Or, like at the radio station, if someone swears on the air, the DJ can press the "Dump" button, and a few seconds of the broadcast are eliminated before they even air. That's what I want – a dump/delay button for the past. Just a few seconds are all that are necessary. Of course, with that kind of magic loophole technology, we could be heroes and stop the big tragedies of the last decade. But it's the randomness of a May morning three years ago that I think about the most, when John's sister was killed by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel and veered into oncoming traffic. I want to press a button that deletes that randomness from the timeline. I want to send a message that somehow affords her a few seconds delay, a car length of chaos avoided.
I know that I can't control what happens, and I can't change the past. So I'll just keep telling the people whom I love that I love them. Repeatedly. So they know it's true and I know it's true and if the world throws us into the chaos of tragedy, then there's never any question that we knew we loved each other.
You. I love you.
