February

This always happens in February. September's hope rots into November frustration that I pick up off the floor in February and cradle with murmured lullabies. When the days grow noticeably longer, after I have "the best single valentine's day ever" (which always happens in the most difficult years), I start to love the cracks that let the light in.

I always surrender in February. By now, I have the placement of the brick walls I keep crashing into memorized. I stop trying to run through them. Instead I run my fingers across them, gently, slowly, noticing their small grooves, sharp pieces, smooth indentations. When I'm not throwing my weight against them, trying to push through them, climb over them, move them - so exhausting and defeating - I notice their intricacies and strength. I look around at how they have created my place, and I lay down in their protection. I collapse under their watch.

N's at the grocery store picking up children's cough medicine; her four year old charge sits on the couch, giggling, coughing, squirming, in front of Tom and Jerry. I respond to a work email from the kitchen counter in my pajamas sipping cold coffee and aimlessly wonder if we'll get snow. I'm not in class often enough to care about a snow day, my office consists solely of my laptop, I have to check the right hand corner of the screen to identify which day of the week it is. It's a futile curiosity and a futile identification - everything has been so different these past few months, I'm not certain where to lay my concerns. So I spatter them out and watch them evaporate.

I count the minutes that pass and take note of what fills them. Stuffed with vacancy or the core of what matters - when all is stripped away, I live the moments in extremes. Notice how little Tom and Jerry speak and remember how selfless and gratifying it is to love a four year old. But I hardly know this four year old. These days I can't carry the heavier things, so they effortlessly sustain me, while I watch vacant thoughts come and go. They're visitors in my home, walking through the front door, entertaining me for a moment and passing through the back door. Not noticing that I am on the ground with my hands admiring the wall. It is February after all.

Seventeen

She looks twenty three. I would sell her cigarettes without asking for ID. Beer, too. But she tells me she goes to parties and leaves early, without drinking, before the rest get drunk. Last year's sixteen year old has faded into seventeen going on twenty three with the responsibility of a thirty five year old. She carries these ages steadily, weaves them together and wears them as one cloak. But I want to hold her the same way I would a tired two year old -- gather her in my lap and hold her until she feels safe enough to forget... to forget it all. My eyes follow the blunt line of her side-swept bangs; I can tell she has cut her own hair again. It states "edgy," with authority. An authority she owns, an authority she has earned.

I wonder if my seventeen year old self would have been friends with her. How would I have loved her then? Could I have loved her? Certainly not with this same motherly instinct that overwhelms every expression I have towards her now. An instinct that doesn't assert itself in any other moment of my life and that I try to bury when I am with her. She does not need another mother. Not now, at seventeen.

If we had been seventeen together, would we have saved each other? Held on for dear life against the world's undertow? The undertow of our worlds. Would we have shared a world? And pulled each other out? Or pulled each other down, but with hands clamped together tightly? Would it have been easier than walking out alone?

I could have used some of her "edge" at seventeen. Hell, I could use some of her edge now, at twenty six. But I get now what I would not have gotten then - she has earned every sense of authority she has. I am so damn proud of her. So proud of her that I can honestly say - it would have been my loss entirely if we had not been friends at seventeen.

Fever and Chills

The sheet twists around me, co-mingling with my thrashing legs until I finally, fully wake with near desperate need to use the bathroom. Fever clings so tightly to my aching skin that removing the wrought sheet from my legs sends fire and ice up my back and out my finger tips. I crawl to the end of my bed with only a split-second thought tossed to the bottle of tylenol sitting on my dresser. I don't have the energy to stop and stand/ untwist the top and tip the bottle over/ shake gently until one pill and then another falls out/ take a sip of warm, stale water and swallow. With a passing glance at the bottle, I stand. Up. On. My. Own. Feet.

The blood rushes from my head down to my feet. Painfully determined, I open the door to my room feel the wave of cold air wash over my fire and ice body. In an instant I am scared I am going to pass out, and I am certain that I am going to throw up. Panic mixes with my bladder's desperation and I drop to my hands and knees on the living room carpet. This is the point where the healthy version of myself would dissolve into high-pitched squeaky laughter at the visual of myself on my hands and knees hovering above the wine-colored dining room carpet. But the three-day-high-fever-no-end-in-sight version of myself feels weak, and scared, and betrayed.

The bathroom door is shut. I shut my eyes and home that it's N in there. I'll scare the boys if they find me this way. N will come out, scoop up my frail body and help me to the bathroom without needing explanation or smile or front of an independence I no longer remember how to feel.

My stomach barrel rolls. I can't wait. I crawl into the kitchen over the cold tiles certain that the handful of crackers I ate last night will make a re-appearance. The tupperware bowls are in the bottom cabinet. I'm certain I am exaggerating, but I know what the thermometer reads when the tylenol wears off, and I'm scared. And so cold. Shaking uncontrollably on the kitchen floor.

The bathroom door opens and I call out N's name without the energy to hope that it is her. It is. I don't worry about scaring her, even if I am. My panic subsides, but the shaking does not. She helps me to the bathroom and waits outside the door. The nausea is gone, but the shaking remains. She walks me back to my room; my arms draped around her shoulders. We pass by the thermostat. 57 degrees. Our heat broke in the night, again. I'm almost relieved. A high fever and an arctic apartment - no wonder I'm shaking. N puts me to bed, opens the tylenol bottle with ease, and produces two for me to swallow. I can feel the heat emerge as I open my mouth and I want to wonder why I am so cold when my body temperature is so high.

N pulls the covers back up around my shoulders. I want to say "thank you" and "I love you" and "you're my person" - that line from Grey's that I don't really understand because I haven't seen enough episodes - and "you're my Carrie" when she comes to help a flu laden Samantha, and "I hoped it was you in the bathroom"... but I'm shaking, worried that I'll never stop, she's gone, and I'm falling back to sleep.

Triggered Memory: Commutes from the Past

Interstate East with old memories of hot, hot summers and no air conditioning… driving home in bumper to bumper traffic, pedal down to the floor and volume alllll the way up. fingers switch from ipod melodies to droning traffic reports five minutes before five and then work down the buttons of my collared shirt. over the bridge and slowly, slowly merging into standing traffic, pulling at the sleeves wondering, again, why i didn’t take it off in the parking lot fifteen minutes before? although, this is a parking lot. layered spaghetti strap tank, hair swept up, creeping to the right and keeping the beat with paper cut hands against the scorched steering wheel. paperclips still attached to my pockets, but i leave the rest of the workday behind and lose myself in eminem’s rhythm. bouncing more than dancing in a sea of almost-familiar faces, my rattling car and i roll past inquisitive glances, towards open road, seventy miles an hour and sixty minutes of clarity, until it slips through my fingers pulling into the driveway.