2019-12-12 - 3:52 p.m.

winter blues, mid december.

some days, you wake up to find that nearly everyone who was in your house when you went to bed has vanished overnight. more books have been pulled off the shelves than were returned to their places, and nobody flushed the toilets after having a piss, and someone tuned your child's toy guitar and played it until it slipped back out of key. every mug and cup and glass from the cabinets is out on the counter - residue in the bottoms, lipstick on the rims.

everyone else is off to work, or school, or somewhere. but here you are in a house that's been turned topsy-turvy, alone with the children and all the filth that built up under the fridge and behind the furniture.

i suppose you're not such a very good housekeeper. each of your pets is very old, and you haven't even taken down the halloween decorations. last summer, you curb-scavenged a planter containing a wilted shred of pothos and some exhausted dirt. exhumed and repotted, this plant is now unfurling a steady march of leaves against the downstairs bathroom window. for each new leaf that opens and cocks its green face toward the light, an old leaf yellows and withers and drops to the floor.

all growth entails some loss. thank heavens for whatever anthroposophical crackpot invented waldorf playthings. what crueller timepiece than those plastic fisher-price toys, each carefully calibrated to be your child's favorite thing for a three-to-six month developmental window, and then discarded. childhood-slipping-away, time-barreling-forward.

* * *