091318 it’s a pleasure to sit down next to a giant stuffed polar bear and write about anything that’s not pure nonsense. It’s truly a pleasure. Tonight, after bringing the car into the garage for the night; that suburbanite’s equivalent of oh I don’t know, closing up the sheepfold for the night?; and Megan’s new crush having been quirky and smart-ass-y but also quite nice and cute and polite and respectful--you know he actually came back into the kitchen specifically to say “thanks for having me” to me? Yeah, definitely points for that. And did I mention he’s kinda cute?--anyway, after that, and after Libby’s homework and her hurt knee from running, dammit, and Cel’s doctor visit (strep, dammit) and Millie’s homework at the kitchen table with her headphones on and her frustration that she can’t play her flute music as well as she wants to dammit, and after all that, after my meetings today and feeling brain-fuzzed and exhausted and still being way behind (already) on grading (dammit, but I’M GOING TO CATCH UP TOMORROW, DAMMIT)--after all that, and the rumble of the garage door closing like a surfeit of piled-up punctuation for the end of the day’s long sentence--oh yeah, and after emailing Lib’s principal about the stupid math class and being relieved I had the sense to walk to ALDI first before hitting “send” so that I could come back here after thinking about it in the background for a little bit and decide to dial back the snark a couple of notches because you should always be prepared to be wrong, and when you’re wrong you don’t want to be an asshole about it, and even if you’re right, you don’t NEED to be an asshole about it, so yeah--after all that, there was this glimmer. The glimmer was like, hey. I get to go in there and sit in my quiet humble scrappy mismatched living “room” with the screen door open and astronomer cats plotting out their courses for the evening, with my invisible imaginary stuffed polar bear sitting by my side kind of half-heartedly watching a show or something, one great paw resting on his great belly and the other one fiddling with a napkin or something while he looks up every now and then to comment over my shoulder or ask me another small question, and you know what? IT’S AN INDESCRIBABLY LUXURIOUS PRIVILEGE TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT TONIGHT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD BUT THANK GOD ANYWAY FOR THIS FLEETING GIFT, THIS LUSCIOUS BLESSING, THIS TAWNY SCRAWNY EVENING OF A FEW MINUTES TO JUST BREATHE AND TYPE ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL THAT’S NOT PURE NONSENSE. MEGAN’S CRUSH HUGGED MEGAN BEFORE THEY SAID GOODNIGHT, AND THE WHOLE WORLD’S HUGGING ME RIGHT NOW. House with people in it. Believe it, bro. It’s here, it’s now. Look here’s the thing: IT’S NOT PERFECT. IT’S NOT A FAKELY PASTORAL MARY JANE TREACLE ALLEGORY OF PERPETUAL HARMONY. It’s a real house, which means there’s real mice and real fricton and people bumping elbows and sometimes yelling. Sometimes things get broken, but you know what? Not in violence. It’s not like that here, any more. There’s not a serpent of hatred seething thru the sky of every room anymore. There’s not wallpaper of shame yellowing the light of every room anymore. There’s not drippings of sadness oozing over the countertops. There’s not blocks and stacks of plastic objects hastily arranged into a pathetically inadequate levy holding back the flood of sadness and inadequacy. There’s not lies to children in here anymore. We mostly tell the truth. We strive to tell the truth. I took the bird clock down. The bird clock was a lie. Every other thing she said was a lie. It’s not like that here anymore. Now, if somebody breaks something it’s because they dropped it. Maybe their fingers were buttery from toast at breakfast and they dropped a plate and it broke. It’s OK. Nobody threw anything at anybody else. Nobody got smacked in secret, while I was gone and nobody told me. We have problems. We’re honored to have real problems now, not just reactions to flak flying through the air. We pried up all the floor boards and took out all the land mines. The polar bear helped. It was dangerous work. He’s clumsy but very brave. As a matter of fact, one of them went off once. That’s why his one paw rests on his belly and the other one fiddles with stuff. It’s his restless paw. Because the land mine went off, and the polar bear, bless his fuzzy heart, he jumped on it. It was still in his hand, and he closed his fist and hit the deck and he took the brunt of that goddamned explosion, so the girls wouldn’t get hurt. I love that fat son of a bitch. The girls wrapped up his wounds in homemade bandages that they made from scraps of rags and handkerchiefs. They took turns watching over him. They took turns sleeping by him. They patiently nurtured him back to health. He sat there patiently through it all. And now they’ve gone to bed and he sits here beside me while I type. He doesn’t bother me. He knows. But when I’m done and I put aside the computer and look up, he gives me a few more moments before he says, Hey can you pass the chips. And I do, and I don’t even mind that we’re sitting on the couch, and you know--*crumbs!*--and I don’t even mind, because, you know, it’s him. It’s the giant stuffed imaginary polar bear that saved my girls’ lives. Here. Have some chips. Have a blanket. Let me give you a backrub. It’s the absolute very least I can do.