The Sound & the Fury
I’ve been up since four. Well, since three but I didn’t get out of bed right away, hopeful I might drift back to sleep. I used to be a champ sleeper, and sleep is the one thing I could count on to refresh and renew my mind. And now I can’t even count on that anymore. There must be a silver lining somewhere, so here I go looking for it, ever hopeful.
When I write, I don’t always know what thoughts are going to tumble out on the page, sometimes I surprise myself with the twists and turns, my insistence on taking random thoughts or experiences and linking them together. But when I have managed to weave together small otherwise unremarkable moments, I get a great sense of satisfaction, a sense of mastery over the universe. Life, you had me staring into the meaningless void, but aha, here I come, (unexpectedly?) windsurfing on the chaotic swells of existence!
With that bold exclamation, here are the random small thoughts running around my head at the moment, related only in that they are small moments of disconnect and I have the desire to share them:
At a start of a meeting the other day, I shook hands with someone and he gave me, the only woman in the room, a weak handshake. I know he didn’t give the other men in the room a weak handshake because no man respects another man with a weak handshake. I have taken the limp fish I received as a sign of disrespect. Does that say more about him or about me? I once went to a therapist — a female —who gave me the weakest handshake I think I’ve ever experienced. I did not go back.
My husband is coaching the kid’s soccer team this season. I think this is wonderful for him, except this means I am now the wife of the soccer coach, a role for which I’m afraid nothing in life has prepared me. I think mainly it involves talking to the other parents like I care about the sport and making sure someone is bringing snacks. The first game was this past weekend. And wouldn’t you know it, after mere moments of standing there alongside the field, a woman came up to me and, paying deference to my newfound status, asked, “Are you the wife of the coach?” I am she. Moments later, my daughter complained of a stomachache. She started to wimper and so I gladly took the out and took her home, away from the prying sun and chatty soccer moms — to whom I confessed my true status as a know nothing about soccer, leaving a limp fish of an impression — and leaving the coach wifeless. Maybe I will do better next week.
I drove into work yesterday and then by the end of the day, enough had happened that I forgot I had driven in and took the bus home. This is a very me thing– lost in thought and suddenly somewhere I didn’t expect to be, which can be on the sidelines of a soccer game or in this case, twenty-six miles away from my car. That I haven’t done this in several years is actually pretty remarkable. My husband, the man who vowed to love me in sickness and in health, is currently padding around the house getting ready to drive me to the bus stop. I think he finds my absentmindedness mostly endearing — but less so at six in the morning.
There is some magic rule of three (three body paragraphs with three main points!) so I’m limiting this to three random thoughts, like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
