I have never

I have never worked so hard to find a job. So many applications, essay questions, TB tests, birth certificate requests. So much running around, so much hoping, so much positive thinking. This is saying something, something depressing, about my previous efforts to find a job. I don't think I worked very hard back then. I think I was young and naive and pliable and didn't have to work as hard. Now I am hard.

I have never been so mad at my kids' school, and that is saying something about right now because this school has upset me in the past for good reasons. I have a meeting tomorrow with the administrator I used to really like and respect and felt like I was liked and respected by. Not anymore, and that depresses me as well as teaches me something about my view of loyalty and betrayal. I don't forgive and forget as well as I might like myself to. Why?

I have never worked so consistently to clean up this house. Billy said, the other day, that it was nice that we had a house. He is right. And it's time I showed that. I'm starting the basement, because we are going to do some light remodeling to the bathroom off the kitchen (new floor, new walls, a door that fits, new cabinets or shelves) and it will probably require access to the basement. Access is key. Did I mention my father was helping me on this project? Did I mention his basement looks like a PBS wood workshop?

I have never been so happy to crawl into bed and watch something easy and familiar than this post-Christmas winter. It's been Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix, one at a time, a season at a time. Closing down my mind these days has been difficult. Patrick Stewart is helpful.

I have never worked on girl scout cookie sales before, even though I've been a leader for 7 years. I've always been so fortunate to have good cookie managers, and now it is mostly up to me, at least with one of my troops. And you know what? It isn't as hard as they've cracked it up to be.

I have never had a nightmare so desperate, so realistic, and so horrifying as the one that woke me up at 3:30 in the morning (as I read the death certificate of my son and kept focusing on the time, 3:30, and that number was what I was thinking as I awoke and saw the clock and the bewilderment and confusion that arose out of that coincidence or synchronicity or whatever you want to call it was something I have never experienced). The strange details of conversations of relatives and friends so compelling and so trivial. Finding myself moving through stages of grief in my nightmare. The weather, the carpet in my mother-in-law's living room, the phone ringing for the shop in the kitchen, everything was so incredibly real. Needless to say, it took a long time to go back to sleep after I was able to focus on the now.

I have never so appreciated the sound of the attic door opening at 5 this morning and hearing those feet on my floor. "Why did you come down?" I mumble as I scoot over and let him lie down next to me. "Because I love you," is the answer.