9.21.20

Cribs & Carpet

The year I turned 25, I got married, changed my last name, moved to L.A, and started my first "real" job. The year I turned 30, I had my first baby and wrote my first novel. The year I turned 40, I was hurled into Pandemia.

I will never know if the feelings of utter alienation I felt when I was 25 were because I had a new husband and a new last name or because I was living in a new city and working my butt off at a new job I knew on day 2 I did not love. I will never know if the exhilarating euphoria I felt when I was 30 was because I'd just become a mother or because I’d just become a writer. And now, at 40, I don't know how to account for the fact that I have transitioned from a person who once said goodbye to the crib that held her three babies (this goodbye involved my speaking in a hushed tone to a chipped wood frame and thanking it for holding my sweet children and sometimes their mother night after night without collapsing under the weight of our sleeplessness) to a person who looks at the carpet that was just ripped out of the bedroom where all three of those children slept as babies -- carpet that was beneath our feet and knees for a decade of moments I don't ever want to forget -- and thinks, "Huh. Well. That's over!" and continues on with her day. Would I have outgrown my nostalgia naturally had it not been for the pandemic, or did six months of surreal timelessness rip it from my clenched fists? Either way, the overriding sentiment I’m feeling this year is ephemerality. I’m learning to hold it all loosely. The plans, the future, the carpet. But not each other. Let's hold on tightly to that.