Quiet...

It is so quiet here.

I can hear the air coming through the vents.

The quiet is warming me, turning my body slack.

We had a friend over this morning, and three lunches, three trips to the bathroom, three pairs of shoes, three carseats in the back. Then there was school and groceries and the park. It is November and the sun is shining. What a miracle! Louisey is obsessed with going down slides. But then, in the car, she threw up all over herself.

During the winter months, my children are overcome with the plague.

I tell Daddy to meet us at the library because Scouty is so sure that she's going to pee herself, we couldn't possibly make it home.

I stare through the windshield at the day that is darkening much too soon. I watch as my fantasy of having a walk through the leaves before it gets too late turns into another one of those things that we'll have time for when we're old.

When the girls are grown, we'll go to movies and have lunch outside, reading the paper. When we're old, we can act like kids again. We won't even have time to notice that we're waiting for it; a free Sunday morning, a dinner where nobody is spitting anything out.

For now, I'm crammed into the bathroom at the children's library. I'm peeling a little dress with mushrooms printed on the front over my baby's head. My big girl is kicking her feet and singing, her beautiful little voice echoing off the yellow tile. "I need your jacket, honey," I tell her. "Louisey's pants are covered in puke and I don't have any other ones."

"Why do you need my jacket?"

"Well, I'm going to put her legs through the arm holes and then buckle her into the stroller and hopefully nobody will notice that she's wearing a jacket for pants," I explain.

This is just novel enough to work. This is just the sort of thing people can't comprehend unless they've been here. That delirious moment where you've rattled your wheels right off. Where the hope of keeping it together is so far behind you, there's nothing left but to go jangling around in public places, inventing clothing and rinsing the barf off of your children in the bathroom sink.

But then, there's Daddy. He's tall and smartly dressed and fresh from work smelling of copier toner and Old Spice. He's impossibly blonde and boyish and he tells you, "I'll take the girls home and get them cleaned up. You come home whenever you're ready."

I'm sitting in the library with this wonderful book in my lap, absorbing the lightness of a quiet place.


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Today's post is a link up with Heather of The Extraordinary Ordinary's Just Write. If you want to join in, write something about the details of your day and link up! Be sure to read a few other pieces and get to know some great new writers in the process.