Nothing gold can stay! Books, bunnies, betrayal.
<p class="">Yesterday my mom texted: “Do you ever find yourself on the verge of tears during all this?”</p><p class="">At the time I answered “No,” mostly because I want her to believe she needs Prozac as much as I believe she needs Prozac. (Yeste
Yesterday my mom texted: “Do you ever find yourself on the verge of tears during all this?”
At the time I answered “No,” mostly because I want her to believe she needs Prozac as much as I believe she needs Prozac. (Yesterday she also texted me “They’ve canceled my cannabis order” to which I replied, “That’s a shame.” She meant “canvas”—a duplicate order of a canvas print. But again, I’m trying to help her.)
To be honest, I’m not a crier in my day-to-day. But I can’t deny that I certainly have felt emotional swings during all this.
Today, for instance, I finished reading Watership Down for the first time. Not only is it strange to think I’d never read that children’s classic, but I didn’t even realize it was about rabbits. Rabbits, I say! I thought it was lovely and brilliant and not appropriate for my 12-year-old rabbit-loving, easy fainter of a son.
As with all great books, I pushed to the end because I wanted to know how it ended so badly, but I also have fallen into the pit of grief that follows the conclusion of something nice.
“Oh, Hlao-roo,” I murmured wistfully at Peanut the bunny while he waggled his nose next to me.
So I suppose I’ve felt a good deal of grief during all this, even though I’ve also had a lot of good fortune and peace. Nice things have been paused or ended (Oliver’s soccer season, the children’s in-person school year, etc.) and, empath that I am, I’ve fretted over the losses that aren’t even affecting me (weddings! graduations! job loss! death and destruction! Etc.)
During this whole thing, my bestie Nick and his wife (who are also the children’s’ godparents) sold their house that was down at the opposite end of our street and moved away. A WHOLE MILE away! It now takes FIFTEEN MINUTES to walk to their house instead of FIVE.
Granted, our four-person daily text chain (me and Noah, Nick and Megyn; titled “Best Friends Gang”) has been unaffected by this move. The biggest change has been not being able to look out our front door and see if their cars are in their driveway. And when we do take walks, it’s taken several prolonged discussions and detours to get Harry to understand the concept of “old house” and “new house.”
But still! Nothing gold can stay!! Ugh! AND some other lovely neighbors on the corner are ALSO moving later this month! I’m not crying, you’re crying!
Of course, it’s been a major bummer that we couldn’t help Nick and Megyn move (lol just kidding I didn’t want to) but it’s also lousy that we can’t hang out in their new house and have dinner together, or watch a movie in one of their two living spaces: they have a basement TV/game area! They have four new toilets and I haven’t used any of them, not even once!
Plus, Megyn is a pediatrician who works at a clinic and the hospital, and she’s had some exposure to Covid-19 patients, so I can’t in good conscience sneak into their new house when they’re not home and do pranks the way I did at their old house before this whole thing started. The ripples of this crisis are unending.