Anxiety has sunk in like a cold front. The stars are out tonight, but somehow malevolently bright against the blackness. Our thermometer reads -20F, but I worry that it's broken. I worry. I worry about my mother, lying down in her bed at her condo, with her swollen feet propped up, maybe asleep, maybe eyes open, unseeing in the dark. She asked me if Aunt Betty's son Neil had seen me today. Neil lives in Ohio and we've never met. This type of confusion is new. I worry about that. I worry about finding an assisted living situation for her - imminently. All I can really think about is the way she patted Bruce on the muzzle as he begged for food at the table. He made her smile. She is still kind to animals and chides them like a mother would her toddler.
I worry about the deep cold settling in, and how I'm getting to the airport tomorrow night, how I'm going to fall asleep tonight, still running on the frayed wire electricity of this afternoon's cold brew. I imagine the disaster scenario of an airplane crash in ten different ways, and the broken, empty rod of a screw sticking out of our nightstand resulting in tragedy. I am being ridiculous. I know this. I imagine asking around at the airport terminal for a xanax and then getting arrested by the TSA. The switch to the star light in our dining room has a short and will result in an electrical fire. The chickens are going to freeze to death. The neighbor's cat that we're cat sitting will run away and freeze to death. The Subaru will have engine failure and my children will freeze to death on the side of Goldstream Road. This is insanity.
I spent most of the day at my parents'. My mom's marked decline since we came back from Anchorage leaves me emotionally ragged, that frayed wire again, sparking in anger. The kids are their usual selves, but I don't respond with the usual attempt at patience. I feel like I just came out of a natural disaster - everything is an emergency. Cello practice for Theo and building a fire in the wood stove become monumental and stressful tasks instead of the happy routine they should be.
John put on Frankie Valli and made me dance with him in the kitchen tonight in my pajamas. It felt like a scene from a movie. The song faded out and I didn't know what to do (how does one end a dance routine when the music disappears on you?) so I went back to making the kids' sandwiches for their lunches tomorrow. But I felt better. Even though I worry about the burden of life's routines, and parents, and dangerous cold, and the kids and their incessant needs that I leave him with for the rest of the week. I worry.
