When the clouds roll in and no rain comes, I feel the high pressure system rising in my bones. It's a dark day, with heat and humidity bearing down, and I want to lay in bed under the gray metal lamp reading and writing and not at all cleaning or cooking.
I put them into quiet time early because it's too hot for a walk to the park and the tv has been on too long. They've been fighting and hitting and I think, "Oh, summer just started! Let's not do this for three months straight, ok?"
I'm pleading more with myself than with them, for if only I was more consistent, had a routine, kept a clean house, or was wiser with discipline. If only I could figure this thing out. If only I could do it all (or even one teeny tiny little bit of it). If only I knew when summer was ending... I think then I could make it to the finish line.
They are so good with their round cheeks and loose teeth, plastic swords flying through the air and tortilla chips broken by stubby toes. I feel so incapable of being all they need me to be: mother and teacher, home and security. We run into one another in a cramped apartment slowly shedding its cluttered skin (packing up and selling off for an unknown move date in an unknown future). They trip over books and my knee hits the chair and I yell out loud to no one, yet only really to them and those cheeks, "I've had it!"
It is quiet time under a dark, dry sky. He sings loudly from his bed and she escapes, bringing me Lego heads. This is summer.
Day Four.
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