On Mice
“You have all day.”
We were driving home from an event – a book tour I was anticipating for weeks. I sent him the link and billed it as a date night, knowing it wouldn’t be his thing. But that’s partnership, that’s marriage. Doing the thing that isn’t your thing. He’s conscious and generous about our varied interests – his more easily digestible within our current suburban midlife position: golf, paddle, highly unnecessary adult softball. Mine are slightly more abstract: sourdough starter development, meditation, a deep desire to tour a salt cave.
“Where…when do you want to go to a salt cave? There’s a salt cave?”
He tries on various faces that convey interest. Eyebrows lifted, head tilted, corners of the mouth turned up. Next, just one corner.
“I’ll look that up; we’ll find a great one. Salt caves.” He repeats it - it’s so forgettable the term could leave his mind before he can Google it.
Our date nights are increasingly important. The kids are older and more independent, so leaving them is terrifying. Parenting requires a new level of awake now, from caregiver to coach, therapist. Shaman. Everything we do in their presence is a synchronous dance of being completely ignored while examined under a microscope. Meanwhile, we project unresolved and unprocessed cognitive warfare on to them. The universe arranged it like this, so we begin to unravel all of the wires – like that ball of Apple chargers in the junk drawer that we pretend we don’t see every day – in the middle of our lives, just as our children emerge as opinionated, embodied, impressive albeit argumentative young adults. The comedic design of it is that we all must live in one house together and survive, like the Hunger Games.
The author who hosted our sexy date night published a book of essays and was touring to share her thoughts on opening to the creative process. I’ve been searching for my own process, denying that it’s probably (definitely) somewhere in the junk drawer ball of wires. “Intellectually, I get it,” I told him. “I know what to do, I just can’t get my brain to do it. I can’t get my body to do it. I don’t have the time or space to write.”
He looked confused. “You have all day.”
It must be serene, a mind like that. Logic. Structure. Reason. No mice scurrying in the walls at night, scratching behind the plaster of his thoughts, indicating some kind of impossible need. Through the windows of my home, the needs are clear; sink is full of dishes, the laundry pile is high, everyone is h(a)ngry and needs to be driven somewhere and then immediately picked up again. There’s a bounty of emotional needs as well, clingy dog included.
I made a deal with my mind mice. They’ll stay noisy and scratchy but will wait patiently for my kids to launch, at which point I’ll grow out all of the gray hair on my body and head, buy the sweetest little cabin in the woods, toss my phone in the creek and write all day long, willing my marriage to survive it.
But that won’t happen if I keep on my current comfortable path. Time is an excuse for fear – the same fear that prevents me from unraveling the ball of wires to learn what kind of electricity can really flow through them. Doing the thing is the only way to do the thing, so here I start.
Onword.