I drop the girls at school. I pop through the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru for a small hot coffee (cream and two Splenda) and a ham and cheese breakfast sandwich. The rain won’t quit. If anything, it’s coming down harder now. When I get home and park in front of my house, I can’t quite bring myself to get out of the car.

Inside: twelve impossible bills, medicine to take, paperwork wanting my official “remarks” on my longtime depression and anxiety, two dogs who don’t want to go out into the rain to pee or poo, a new program to learn, emails to write, columns to write, a neglected blog to attend to, a six-foot high mound of laundry, a broken toilet, a busted vacuum, dishes in the sink, piles of clothing and toys to transfer to the car for a trip to Goodwill, food that needs cooking, a refrigerator that needs cleaning, a phone number for fuel assistance and low-cost weatherization, a bottle of whiskey to ignore.
Read the rest of this entry

I have a new part-time gig, doing some editing from home, for some lovely colleagues. It’s not full-time, but I am grateful for the work. The girls and I are always desperate for warm clothes and groceries and oil to heat the house as the weather grows chilly. Every fall, I wonder how we will squeak by, make it through another New England winter. Every dollar helps. Mucho.

But I am freaking out, certain I will somehow blow this good thing. I don’t feel lucky, as a rule. Grateful, yes, but rarely lucky anymore. I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the next handbasket to hell to come trucking by with my name on it in blinking neon.

Be good, brain, I keep saying to myself. BE GOOD. LEARN THINGS. YOU CAN STILL DO IT.

Can I? it replies, concerned. You may have me confused with another brain.

Read the rest of this entry

She is her mother’s daughter, this little one. She can’t let go of the past and its false promises, its promises of “if only, then everything would be better.”

She did not want to go to her father’s house last night. This is not the usual, not at all. We were stunned by her wailing, clutching the back of the sofa, begging to know why we can’t all just live in the same house, weeping that her parents being divorced means that nothing, ever, is going to be better.
Read the rest of this entry

Kiddo #2 is going through a rough time. Bedtime is bad. Real bad. Again.

She’s eight years old, starting third grade this week. She’ll be nine in November. But this summer was too much for her, I know it, I can see it.

I told her dad today that I thought we’d screwed up, that we should have listened better to her when she said she wasn’t ready for sleepaway camp. She’d rallied, not wanting to let anyone down, I think. But it took a toll on her. There’s just no pretending that it didn’t. It took all she had to keep it together for one week of camp, and her coping resources were maxed out. Her reserves are empty, and it may be some time before she can fill them again.
Read the rest of this entry