Apologies All Round

July 18, 2007

Filed in: The Home Front

You’re going about your business, trying to stay out ahead of things. You’re making sure the bills don’t get swept into the recycling bin, making sure the kids have a vegetable at lunch, making sure you stay away from that one co-worker in the coffee room.

You try to hug your spouse once a day, even if it’s in such a way that makes it clear that, sorry babe, nothing’s going to happen tonight. You try to think of your grandmother on her birthday, though she’s been gone eight years now. Sheepishly, you try out a tooth-whitening system, but it’s okay because you do it ironically, keeping your expectations hipster low. You’re doing your best, in other words, to be a B/B+ citizen of the global economy.

Then somebody--your colleague, your child, your neighbor, your mom, your childhood best friend, the love of your life, a perfect stranger--hits you with one of those two-word whammies that leaves you in unexpected, knee-walking despair.

“It happens.”

“We’re broke.”

“You free?”

“He’s gone.”

“I’m married.”

Or this: “I’m blogging.”

With sincere apologies to the love of my life, my children, my mom, my neighbors, my co-workers, my best friends from childhood and elsewhere, and perfect strangers the world over: I’m blogging.