the write salve.

Write.  Yes, write, because it soothes, because it acts on the nerves like thick, pink coating.  Think of the morning, caught on the phone for a business matter while traipsing through the carpet store, acknowledging finally the exhausted grandmother, the toddler draped across the entrance to the booth for the employees, squealing, the grandmother's face simultaneously ashen and red.  Scoop up the child, whose arms wind readily around the steady neck of his mother, mouth still chattering a blue streak, sweet face pressed against her clicking cheek.  Relief a flag on the grandmother's profile that wavers as she bends to clear the detritus of the lately-removed toddler. 

The fast food settles badly against the landscape of the mother's stomach, all punched up and bitter, her thoughts circling one another like wet-fanged coyotes as her son wrestles against drowsiness in his small bed.

She remembers the ire raised on her neck at the restaurant when the barely-legal cashier debated her on the merits of a large handbag for all of her things; references his own mother's unnecessarily large bag, mocking her constant search for the wallet in such a reservoir, and her own pretense-at-mildness response along the lines of his mother having probably grown accustomed to such a bag when he himself was small and required her to carry many additional items for his use, for his sake.  Rather than reacting as he should, as she should have liked him to, in a less unabashed manner, he continues to jeer at mothers-who-carry large-bags-unnecessarily, and she pushes it away from herself, in an attempt to not personalize this boy's resentment of his mother for having ever been there with the extra-large store for things he might require.

Her son fell because she tickled him while he ran back and forth along the smooth plastic bench of the restaurant; she had only wished to join in as he and his grandmother played a silly, toddler-appropriate take on a game of tag, but she was, as usual, overwhelming in her sudden involvement; he buckled his knees, an expected, typical reaction, upon feeling her gyrating fingers - so why did she not recognize that he would do the following?: and fell sideways, head smacking against the leg of the table nearby, her arms only barely capturing him before he fell all the way to the floor.  If only she hadn't picked fast food, she thought, and if only she hadn't had to be doing business on the phone while in that store, this would've never happened, she wouldn't have gestured to the grandmother to "head to the nearest _____'s," thinking (mistakenly) there was a play area to be accessed there.  He wasn't injured, or even bruised, really.  Just frightened and clinging.  Her error.  She held him to her and cooed, walking him outside to talk to him away from the watchful eyes and ears of the grandmother who cared almost too much but in ways that unnerved her.

She heard herself bargaining.  Maybe a cookie would make him feel better?  (Because the fast food and accompanying plastic toy that were giving her cause to believe herself among the worst of corporate bed-fellows on earth already weren't enough of a bending-in-the-wrong-direction.)  He just wanted some milk, and she heaved a sigh.  Not necessarily of relief.

His soft squeak of a snore started her from her semi-dreaming state.  He was asleep, finally.  She could creep down the hall and get to work.  There was that phone call to be returned, and some other business that had come up in the meantime, the need to slightly alter a job that had not come out quite as the company she'd produced it for had hoped.  She began, instead, to take down the books and other decorative objects on shelves, stacking them quickly in boxes standing nearby. 

Her thoughts returned to the fight from yesterday, the one that had not yet been resolved.  It stung her.  It was ongoing, this argument, it was the one that had interfered with their old relationship the moment they had become actual parents, not the in-theory kind that had brought about a million easy conversations, about Christmas and the zoo and tickle sessions and playing ball and chasing the dog.  It was like a chain around her head that squeezed harder sometimes than others.

She sat down, quick, in her work chair, to escape the noxious emotion erupting about the endless argument over how to parent their child.  Her guilt, building all morning, settled back in its usual resting place.  The bilious gray clouds pushing against the window felt heavy at her back.

Comments

[slouching mom]

Oh, was this ever beautiful. A drop-dead gorgeous piece of writing.

[kristen]

fantastic writing here friend, the way you capture all the feelings of being a mama and the myriad of emotions that are tangled up in that name.
maybe if you'd bonked the boy upside the head with your too-big bag, he'd have remembered fondly that his own mama's bag was full of love for her son.

[jozet]

That was effing beautiful.

How do you do it, that thing you do with words?

How do you put down in poetic prose those wonderous, mundane moments and turn them into the sublime?

How do you do it?

[Nancy]

Seriously. I don't know how you do it either. Beautifully captured, and making my heart ache for you.

[slouching mom]

Come by my site for an award, friend.

[qt]

That little weekend getaway to CHi-town was so desperately needed, wasn't it?

Wishing you the best from afar, friend. Wishing I was closer and could do something other than type these words.

[Her Bad Mother]

"Write. Yes, write, because it soothes, because it acts on the nerves like thick, pink coating."

Yes.

[Gwen]

Do you know the band Travis? This reminded me of their song "Writing to Reach You." I'm not one to understand the lyrics of the songs, but for you, here, I think the "you" to be reached is, well, YOU.

[Emily]

Here from Slouching Mom.

What an intense read. What an intense day.

[Ruth Dynamite]

Oh. [pause]

You just keep writing your way through this giant stressball, OK? Do your thing. It's a beautiful thing. And soon enough life will quiet down.