Covered

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.

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-- -- --

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.

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