Thank you for reading.
I need to tell you
That it's not going to lighten up.
But it won't go on forever.
This collection,
In case you haven't guessed,
Is on death and anxiety (a one-woman comedy by ginna hoben!)
Welcome.
Or welcome back.
Would you please scroll down and become a follower?
-- -- --
I cannot get on top of my shit.
So it feels.
In the midst of pandemic life
Recouping/recharging
At my parents' home in Ohio
Before a return to New York.
Distracted,
I can’t keep to a schedule,
My dinners don’t taste as good,
And I’ve always forgotten at least one thing
When I return from the store.
At bedtime,
I am plagued by any bad
That my brain quickly spins into the unbearable.
(You know this about me, already, I think.
If not,
Hi, I'm Ginna,
I have a wicked imagination
and I suffer from anxiety.
I'm also currently out of work
and have a host of anxiety-related physical symptoms
including a pear-sized rash on my right butt cheek.
How's that for all those mommy bloggers out there
who keep telling me they are "keepin' it real"?
Do you ladies have eczema on your asses, too?
Oh.
Cool, cool, I understand:
keep it real and leave out the ass-rash. Got it.)
... So when my five-year-old daughter
Complains about nightmares
Before she has even fallen asleep,
I can relate.
Even if she is perhaps,
Exaggerating...
THIS nighttime
Katie Lu can't sleep.
Katie Lu claims she can't sleep.
Katie Lu is having nightmares.
But Katie Lu hasn't even fallen asleep yet.
I am the more sympathetic parent in these instances.
Sheffield classifies these stay-up-later tactics as
Dilly-dallying.
While he is surely identifying some
Legit procrastination,
I am identifying Waking Nightmares,
to which I am no stranger,
and it is my instinct to comfort.
I can’t get on top of my own shit
But I’ll spin some into gold
To help my girl.
And then I will have done
one
tiny
thing
To counter my otherwise
Failing daily assessment
Before I close my eyes
So, THIS nighttime, it is I
Who walks her back to her bed
Pats her back
Rubs circles between her small (so small!) shoulder blades
Sings offkey (which she has yet to notice)
And repeats the steps above
Until she is calm.
Until I have led her
To lead herself
To believe
That all is right in her world.
This, I’m convinced,
Is what she wants
What I want
What lots of us want
When we are left alone
At the end of another day.
Some tiny assurance...
Please tell me it’s okay.
Please tell me we're safe.
Please tell me nothing will come in the night and take you from me
Or me from you.
(I know I am not keeping it real
When I claim it doesn’t matter if it’s accurate,
It only matters that we think so.)
But when we get ourselves close enough to believing it,
I leave her room.
But (so) first, she has a question.
This is her most classic dilly-dalliation.
Often,
Before I make it out of the room,
I hear:
"How can people see through glass?"
“Why do you still have breasts if the breast milk is gone?”
"Who made God?"
Yes, the shrewd parent knows she or he is being manipulated.
The shrewd parent responds,
"We'll have time to discuss that in the morning."
But I am rarely shrewd
And mostly tired and gooey at bedtime.
And so,
After explaining
In five-year-old terms
Why I still have breasts
But no baby,
I feel good about the bonding time we had
And I think,
Well.
I'm glad we got that covered.
My girl does not fear hard questions.
If the child gets wind of a death
From a movie (thank you Paddington Bear;
you were the first, but not the last)
Or the news,
Or from us,
The child wants to know.
And the child will ask.
Once, at 18 months, my daughter strayed too close to the curb
And when I pulled her back and explained
That it is my job to keep her safe
And I don't want a car to hurt her,
She said,
"Because then I would get died-ed?"
I was more than stunned.
Who told you that?
She did not answer,
She picked up a pebble
Giggled a bit
And toddle-galloped a few paces onward.
Okay. Sure.
Lots of babies know what death is.
What?!
I asked Sheffield if he had explained death to her.
"What? No. What?!"
I asked my mom.
"What? No... ?"
This was before the child was exposed to screen time,
So I decided she is experiencing reincarnation
And I should stay calm and listen for upcoming clues about her past life.
. . . and death?
. . . I guess?
As she got older,
Her questions became more pointed,
And as "the coronavirus" became
A household term,
Her questions centered there.
awesomenotawesome.
I am careful not to give her answers
That I may contradict someday.
(I have already gotten myself into a bind about angels...)
And a lot of the time
I tell her "I don't know."
or
"Nobody knows for sure."
Sometimes, if the hour is right, I say,
"What do you think?"
A question
For her question.
THIS nighttime,
She makes please tell me it’s okay sound easy
when she asks,
"How do I get the bad thoughts out of my head?"
. . . I mean,
I know it's not okay to tell her,
"Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro, and Celexa."
But...
We're keeping it real, right?
-- -- --
when I was growing up,
there was a real thing
among us three sisters
about sharing rooms.
as teens, I was so unbearable a roommate
that I scored myself my own room
for four years instead of the allotted two
in the scheduled rotation.
but as a smaller child,
I mainly shared a room
with my older sister, Katie,
as we were closer in age,
and Kelly, our younger sister,
was in a separate room.
Katie, the older sister and I
were placed in adjacent twin beds in an upstairs room,
which my mom thought made perfect sense.
until every night
we were put to bed
only
to lie on our sides facing each other
and giggle
and giggle
and then outright laugh,
smother our laughter,
and giggle some more.
this drove my mother crazy.
night after night,
she would stand at the foot of the stairs and yell up,
"roll over and be quiet!"
which only made us laugh harder.
because she couldn't see us,
so why would she think we'd actually roll over?
for a while we had a game of rolling
a plastic glow-in-the-dark ball
-probably from a Happy Meal or birthday party-
between our beds in the dark.
we thought it was hilarious
and genius:
we are playing after bedtime!
and she has no idea!!
because the lights are out!!!
hahahahahahahaha!
and when the game
ceased to be hilarious
or Mom's tone grew too angry,
we would finally agree that it was time to sleep.
but we still didn't roll over.
we had a nightly ritual,
four phrases that we repeated to one another
to pledge our love
in case we died in the night.
(perhaps the weight of anxiety
already had me anchored
at the ripe age of six.)
four phrases that provided
the security we craved:
good night I love you see you in the morning don't forget to say your prayers
it never mattered who rattled it off first-
two little girls
six and eight
then seven and nine
eight and ten,
and so on.
and the mantra remained.
after a while, the older sister condensed the phrases
into the single word "roll,"
as in, "this is our evening roll call"
of safeties-in-place
in the event of disaster.
we taught the phrases to the youngest sister.
we three said these things nightly
a signal that we would never go to bed angry at one another.
and that
we were covered.
clean-hearted.
correct in one tiny way.
this memorized material
made its way with us through high school
(I remember,
after a day of bickering, my older sister
standing angrily in the doorway:
"roll!" she repeatedly slung at me,
until I, in the thick of my terrible teens
finally, begrudgingly repeated back: roll.)
and when she went off to her college,
and shortly after I went off to mine,
our letters (yes, the kind on paper and enclosed in a stamped envelope)
often ended
with the single word
as the last word
before the signature.
and when the day came
--two of us in college
one still in high school--
that the eldest sister
was snatched
prematurely
from our lives
from our days
from our fucking futures
and the safeties-in-place
went the way of her windshield
we,
at least,
had said our goodnights.
My girl,
My Katie
Questions-at-night Katie
Questions-that-keep-them-close Katie
Questions-that-fill-a-spot-of don’t-leave-me-alone Katie
My Katie Lu,
A namesake
Distinguished from her deceased aunt
By a middle name attached to the first,
Developed all on her own,
A bedtime script.
It is more of a call-and-response
Than what my sisters and I used,
But comfortingly the same (to me)
And comforting to say (for her.)
"I love you, mommy,"
(Or "daddy" if he's the one in the room)
She says.
I love you too.
And the practiced follow up
"See you in the morning!"
See you in the morning.
And finally, signaling that this probably means the end of dilly-dallyhood:
"Good night!"
Good night, my love.
But here we are
THIS night with
"How do I get the bad thoughts out of my head, mommy?"
. . . Just that one tiny thing, mommy
. . . Before you go to bed, mommy
. . . Could you just help me figure out that one tiny thing
. . . Hmm, mommy
. . . You have an answer for everything, mommy
. . . Right, mommy?
I don’t
I haven't
I can’t even do it for myself, my love
Then my ass-rash flares at the mommy-blogger in me who's "keeping it real." It's not real.
Blogs are crafted; rashes are spontaneous.
And I can't becomes
I can fake it.
I can
play
the
role
I tell her to think about good things.
I tell her to give me the names of
Five favorite friends
Five great movies
Songs
Toys
Toys she doesn't own but wants to own
Ballerinas!
Tutus!
Tinkerbell!
Those silver shoes with the rhinestones
Rhinestones!
Cookie dough
Cake batter
Back-scratches
Pancakes and cartoons
And PJs for too long on Saturdays
Jumping in rain puddles
Wading in creeks
Wading
Wading
And as the grandfather clock
In my mom and dad's great room
Ticks and bongs and ticks
Below us,
My daughter calms
Her eyes get heavy
She says
"I love you, mommy".
I love you too.
"See you in the morning!"
See you in the morning.
"Good night!"
Good night, my love.
Well,
we got that one thing covered.
one
tiny
thing.
