Ordinary

August 11, 2008

Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now

Today I woke up early (6:30) to rain. More rain. I made coffee, fetched the paper off the driveway still in my sleep shirt (the top to a fancy pair of Books Brothers PJs that I bought T but that he never wore) so I could see if it was ever going to stop raining. It wasn’t.

I worked for awhile, said goodbye to T when he came down, tried unsuccessfully to walk the dog (don’t ask), showered, kept working. Greeted first W and, hours later, C as they staggered out of bed. Allowed them to do what they would on a rainy unscheduled momma’s-gotta-work Monday.

At noon we all drove the 1.5 miles to the nice campus with the woodland paths, finally walked P, drove back along the same road. There were five or six orange cones on the right-hand (southbound) side of the street that weren’t there when we first passed and a ordinary-looking sedan pulled fully up onto the sidewalk (there is no shoulder there) because I remember thinking, Dude, way to be parked on the sidewalk.

Came home, made the boys a lousy bowl of ramen noodles for lunch because I hadn’t shopped in a week but had a 1 o’clock conference call, took it, talked to S (more work, but fun work), finally shut down the computer, took the boys to GameStop (ugh) and food shopping (more ugh), came home, unpacked food, threw in a load of laundry, re-checked email, re-walked the dog, started dinner early because C’s GF was coming and ordinary people are not used to eating as late as we do. I stared at the onions and peppers cooking in the pan and thought, who fucking cares about onions and peppers in a pan.

That’s because this whole live-long day, this whole stupid wasted idle rainy August day of our lives, another mom very like me—someone who lives close enough that she could hear me if I opened my door and screamed as if my first-born child had been killed—all today she dealt with exactly that. Her first-born child was killed, this very same day, at the very same orange-cone spot we drove past not once but twice thinking not of her boy but of our dog, dinner, work, bills, what was on the iPod (what was on the iPod was a odd, fun-but-no-fun Killer’s song that I can now a) not get out of my head and b) never disassociate with today or her son).

I imagine, but I do not in any way know, that the mundane details of Swellville life must strike you in such a moment as both unspeakably absurd and unbearably dear. I imagine this boy’s mother would gouge out parts of her body to be able to be bored over onions, to be worried about walking her dog, to be replying to email and putting grapes in a cart and moving wet things from the washer to the dryer like the competent stay-at-home mom she was. I imagine she will never again do any of those things, for that matter never again draw breath, in exactly the same way, but that she would give her eyeteeth to have the ordinary crap-ass Monday we just had. Whatever happens to what’s left of this family, it will never again be ordinary, not any second of it.