An encounter on the train

Just after 9am, I slide into the fourth car of the southbound red line train, between, what I quickly realize, is a quiet lull in her screams. Headachy, tired, energy and thoughts focused on the day ahead, I sink into the first available forward-facing seat (motion sickness is never what I need) and pull a slim paperback from my tote. 

As we roll away from the station, the child begins howling again, guttural, high-pitched wails that reverberate throughout our car. Such screams would always be dissonant, but they are especially so in this sleepy time, in this dim place. 

The screams are near, and as I click my head from twelve o'clock to ten, hoping my left peripheral can grasp some evidence of source, I see her. Two rows back, hair in tiny, ramrod straight pigtails, body sheathed in a turquoise winter coat. There is another parka-clad child -a sibling?- with similarly styled hair, and a shadow of a person attempting to corral them. English is interlaced with a language I cannot place.

Throughout the car, mostly full of solo voyagers in various stages of dress and wakefulness, eyes cast, subtly and obviously, towards the trio two rows behind me. Gawking. Avoiding. Disdaining. Worrying. Wondering. 

The woman- I gather she is she from the tenor of her voice- is so tall and thin she resembles a scarecrow. Her short-cropped hair is sheathed in a knit winter cap. She has given one child her phone, but that has provoked warfare.

One child beats the other -I don't use the word 'beat' irresponsibly- with the gifted phone about the face and brow. The woman screams and issues seating placements. "You here, you there." Always she keeps one encircled in a bony arm. The child forced from the embrace resists exile and screams louder. Frustration, anger, sadness, desire all wrapped into a vocal vortex emanating from her tiny throat.

The tension in the car mounts.

The woman changes tack- she begs, pleads, embraces both children, one gaunt arm per one robust child. Peace is not established. 

I have put away my book. I am aware that my heart is beating rapidly and that my mouth is dry. I want desperately to intervene, but can I? Would some foray into their trio be welcome? Offensive? Rebuffed? Based, simplistically, on the foreign tongue dancing around me, still I cannot place it, would I be making a giant cultural misstep? And anyway, what would I do, and how? 

I scan the car and take in others' coping mechanisms. Louder, perkier conversation with seat mates, ear buds quietly plunged atop pounding drums, baleful looks, disparaging glances. 

My stop is approaching, and the children have not calmed. I swivel over my left shoulder, and without thinking, look directly at the source of most of the screams. I smile at her, whisper "hi sweetie," and wave. As I'm sure my children would have, she pauses, musters a jagged inhale, overcomes her suspicion, and smiles back.

She is beautiful. Face full, pigtails standing at attention, most recent tears drying on lashes and cheeks.

"Would you like an orange?" I hold up a fresh satsuma, glistening with produce wax, and hold it out to her across the empty row between us.

The woman sighs, "Take it," she says with a fatigue I recognize. "Take it."

Gently, I move back, erasing the separative space. Cautiously, I lean toward the woman. Cautiously I ask if she is OK.

"They are twins. They do this to me all the time. Fighting, screaming. I am so tired. My blood pressure is high. I am a single mother to these girls. We are heading out."

Her hollow eyes, her willingness to share with me. She is on the precipice of bursting. Of not being able to handle even one more straw. 

I know this place. I have been there. More than once. If one doesn't have reason to be fully dressed and riding into the city at 9am, the drive is desperation. 

"You must be exhausted," I tell her, putting my arm around her shoulders gently. "You must be so tired. I have two as well. It is so hard." 

The little girls are making sweet eyes at me, and I at them. One tense moment has been diffused. I have always been grateful for those moments of dissolution. Those moments of reprieve when I can take a full breath. I hope this mother feels she can breathe a bit.

The four of us get off at the same stop. I will head to a conference that thrills my soul. I don't know where this family is going.

I kneel down and hold the hand of the one to whom I offered the orange.  I look into their eyes and smile. "Sweet girls, will you be kind to your mother? She is such a good mom. No hitting, just hugs, ok? Can you do that?" They smile and nod, and one peels a bit more rind from the orange.

I stand and look at the mother and take in her shell shock and exhaustion. I hug her tight to me. "I know you must be so very tired. Good luck, ok?" 

They walk toward one exit. Mine is in the opposite direction. I watch them for just a moment, brightly-colored parkas and orange peel and the halting gait of a stretched mother moving farther and farther away. 

I exit at 9th and G and think of them during the half-mile to my destination. Where were they going? What will they do today? Will they be OK?

Crumbs, dear friends, loss, strength

That is mos def one of the vaguest post titles I have ever written and will ever write. It's ridiculous. But so was today.

After a very emotional weekend which included an enormously beautiful memorial service for a friend gone too soon, one of my dearest pals arrived into town last night. This was a balm. I was covered in cat hair and wore no make up. Jack was raising hell about going to cotillion's Holiday Dining Etiquette class which, let's be honest, is the reason I registered him for cotillion in the first place. Eating soup with one's hands? Not appealing anywhere, and yet he persists. Oliver had just split his pajama pants from knee to ankle and was slightly overtired-manic after a perfect day at a pal's house. Tom was goggle-eyed because he'd been to memorial part deux until 2 am. 

If a friend can saunter into that fray, you know she's a good one.

As such, Anne and I celebrated with cocktails, and a large skillet of pasta, and laughter and the realest sort of talk. And then Oliver went to sleep, and Jack came home with a large pamphlet from National Protocol, LTD (OMG, that is so intense! But he did learn so much! Amen!), and Tom went to bed because he was drained, and then we exhaled and clinked glasses and felt the same gratitude- for good friends and bedtimes.

She and I are taking yet another online writing class together. That's how we met, and today found us beginning the fourth or fifth one anew. We wrote together this morning, quietly, at my kitchen table, and then parted ways for several hours.

During that time I saw another friend who lost her mother two months ago and her husband on Thanksgiving. The pain of 2016 is unceasing it seems. Oh, and Ben Carson is heading HUD? What? I am struggling to ingest this news. It's like every day brings a new presidential appointment or expose which is rather like ripping a whole body scab off each and every morning; they are all that terrible. 

Anne walked back in as I was snarfing salad from the mixing bowl and attempting to roll out large amounts of butter cookie dough to stamp before the boys got home to decorate them. Teacher gifts. It's a good thing I wasn't mainlining Xanax, for christs sakes. I mean, shit, 2016.

We caught up from our days, and I was starting to feel centered again and then two hours later, there was a debacle with an over-frosted cookie and a brother and awful words were screamed from one brother to another, and one ended up with a swollen ear, and both were crying, and I just sat in the kitchen like someone who'd just dared look Medusa in the eyes. Frozen. Stunned. Immobile.

Tears coursed down my stone face, and rage through my icy veins, and I was surrounded by crumbs of the cookies I'd just spent hours rolling and baking and cooling, so thoughtfully and hopefully. And that's really the worst of it, I think. That hope and time all in smithereens on the floor around me with kids crying amidst it all and a friend watching on. As if anyone should see the inside of the sausage.

But of course we all see that, just not together. And we should, and Anne did. And she said, "Well, my goodness, I am right at home." Which is, of course, just perfect because she meant it so sincerely and with such love. Because she, too, has found herself crying and surrounded by crumbs and  fighting children and a complete shock at just what the fuck happened on a random Monday night for which you had planned and had such hopes.

It is an hour later now, and I have stopped shaking from rage. I have had some wine. One cleaned the smashed cookies, and I put the others are in Tupperware. Ben Carson is still head of HUD but everyone is standing up for Comet Pizza (as they should), and so many are brave in this fight for our country.

I think about the historical arcs which great countries summit and bend round. I think about how imperialism died and dynasties fell and greatness was vanquished, and I wonder if this is not our time to fall so deeply and so hard. I wonder if the cookie crumbs are the hopes of American progressives, who see the better whole we could be but aren't. Sometimes, hard landings are the only way to learn. 

I think about the resistance, the fight for better. Hell, the fight for good. The fight towards a better, more cohesive tomorrow. And I think about how I will always fight for that, even when I am covered in cat hair and my crow's feet are pronounced and my kids are melting down and I am ashamed of my country's leadership-to-be. This is precisely the time to fight, to resist, to march, to stand up and speak out. It is the time to "feel at home" and to find strength in that and to make the perpetrator sweep the crumbs and to all work hard tomorrow. Damned is the one who won't, for he will lose in the end.

Of moons and nerves, of good moments and dark ones

This evening just before 8pm, my ragtag crew piled into the car and headed to a point higher than the plot on which our house stands. Jack's class is studying China, and in anticipation of tomorrow's celebration of today's Moon Festival, he is to have observed the moon and his reactions to it throughout the past week.

Wednesday night was successful (just look at that photo Tom took!), Thursday was vetoed because of an overtired meltdown, Friday and Saturday nights were too cloudy to view anything, and although tonight is still overcast, the clouds were moving on the wings of a hasty wind. We figured we could glimpse something if we got to an elevated space free of trees.

Once at the triangular patch of grass at the intersection of Nebraska and Van Ness, we tumbled out of the car, plastic telescope and clipboard in hand. Tom was the only one not wearing pajamas. Jack was dressed in long-sleeve and pants orange-and white-striped skeleton jammies, with the shirt tucked in dramatically; I had on a matching set covered in hydrangea blossoms; and Oliver was, unsurprisingly, wearing a mismatched pair that included an inside-out shirt and bare feet. 

I'm certain we looked incredibly bizarre. But sitting in the grass as a cool breeze gusted, we glimpsed the gorgeous moon for a brief time and felt happy.

It was a blessedly tranquil moment during a weekend which has had quite a few highs but also some real lows. Perhaps all families with young children live their weekends on such a roller coaster. Some may be better suited or able to handle mayhem, cacophony and filibuster-scale chatter.

I, myself, wish we could disembark on occasion instead of being strapped in to the front seats on Friday at 5pm and forced to climb, loop and fall until Sunday after dark. I'm tired of being so enervated by simply experiencing a weekend.

That word connotes such leisure and relaxation. Weekend suggests catching up on sleep and togetherness, lazy afternoons and all-day pajamas if you like. 

We've got the togetherness and all-day pajama parts down pat, but leisure? Relaxation? Sleep? Time for individual pursuits? I don't know what the hell you mean. 

Even the peaceful lulls ask something: that a movie be turned on or that we adults put our own desires to bed or that we be waiting to pounce (and able to immediately relax) when the stars align and the kids play without calling to us for longer than fifteen minutes.

Do you know that by 9:30 this morning, after I'd made beignets and hung out, I'd listened to Jack try to engage me in conversation about the periodic table for upwards of ninety minutes? People, I wasn't capable of managing that in college (I'm not joking; I was a ghastly chemistry student), much less on a Sunday morning. I'm also not super interested, as I feel confident that I know as much about carbon and iridium as I'd like. 

So, I armed him with two dictionaries and a wikipedia page, and asked/pled/demanded that he study by himself while I did some work for class. Suffice it to say that did not work, and I felt both defeated and angry. Pissed. Because a brain can only take in so many insistent requests for needs other than its own before starting to fritz out. 

Ol, meanwhile, had taken every toy out of every bin and tried on and then discarded every costume. Tom and I were tripping over plastic tools and MagnaTiles and Lego men and toothpicks and acorns and books. And the house looked like it threw up in itself. And I just could not take all of that input. I can't. 

By the time we reached the little patch of grass where we stationed our observatory tonight, it was roughly 13 hours after our day began. Jack, armed with two shiny new reference books, was still talking about the periodic table, and Oliver had just eaten half the noodles off my plate even though Tom took them out to dinner earlier. 

I was happy in that grass, but getting there felt Herculean. It's hard to balance all the various energies needed to parent well, maintain a marriage, stay connected to friends and self and keep your heart open enough that despite fatigue and frustration, you're at the ready to appreciate the golden moments in which lovely memories are made. 

It doesn't feel possible sometimes. The moon hides, the grass is scratchy, you never knew what ytterbium was in the first place.