Joyful, Anyway

PART I

THE ACHE

CHAPTER ONE

JOYFUL, EXCEPT ON TUESDAYS

THE ALARM STARTS blaring and I'm up. I'm up now.

Through the grainy dark, across the bedroom, I see the door crack open and stop abruptly. Then a figure turns sideways and slips through. For months I have been trying to give away a blanket that looks like a lightly toasted burrito, which undermines my living room's attempts to be sufficiently mid-century modern. But, rather mysteriously, the blanket continues to disappear from the Give-Away Box and here it is, floating like a phantom through the dark until it pauses by my bed.

The burrito wedges himself under the duvet and sighs.

"What did you dream about, Mom?" hisses my son, Zach, because he can't possibly whisper.

"I dreamed I was being pulled behind an enormous boat and I couldn't let go," I tell him, and glance toward the bedside table. My phone is blinking with a reminder about the "no lateness" policy at my Pilates class as tardiness disturbs the vibrational atmosphere. And below that is a WhatsApp message letting me know that while I was sleeping there was a flurry of classroom moms who needed someone—but who?—to bring gluten-free cookies for the fundraiser. I read both a few times over to make sure I am not still in the fugue state of sleep medication. Ever since chronic pain and cancer made their sudden appearance way back when, I don't so much fall asleep as need to be put to sleep like a tranqued bear. I put my head back under the sheets.

Lately the number of small obligations and small heartaches—the sheer volume of them—makes me feel like I can't breathe. Like every thought about what I should do races from my head to my heart to my lungs. Then every thought about what I can't do constricts my chest for a moment. Every time I allow myself to fully consider the direction my life is taking, I feel a little shock wave running through me. But soon I'll get up, make breakfast, and take a lot of fish-oil vitamins with the chilling guarantee of "minimal burp-backs" and that will allow me to limit a normal intake of self-esteem for the day.

"Don't worry about the dream," says the boy, burrowing deeper into his tortilla wrapping. "It's like cupping water in my hands in the bath. It slips away." He says it exactly like that, those precise words, like a seasoned meditation instructor. Then he adds: "Also I have learned that grenades are very simple devices. Is there a place where children can practice using grenades?"

He has been enthusiastically ignoring our family's commitment to pacifism for some time now.

I hear the sound of the coffee grinder downstairs and feel a wave of gratitude for this off-ramp. My son feels my attention shifting and wraps his arms tighter around me.

"Please consider today if we can buy a zeppelin," he says, and I resolve to have another word with my father about whether he can lay off military history in his nightly Zoom chats with his grandson. How about cultivating an appreciation for nature? I will say, and my dad will invariably reply that air-conditioning is God's promise that we never need to go outside again.

By the time I have put on my jeans and a blazer, waterproof mascara, grabbed my gym bag, and made some hurried but uninterpretable sounds of thanks to my husband for the coffee, I'm out the door.

Good habits are the foundation of everything, so I start the weekday morning like every other. I sit down at my desk with a hot cup of hazelnut creamer and a splash of coffee, a heating pad for my old-man back, and a feverish delusion that I will claw my way out of the overflowing garbage heap that is my inbox and list of tasks.

Never mind. I'll do it later. Errands are never errands. Errands are the referendum on whether I have enough of my nervous system left over to restart a fight with Linda from HR about a billing error. Sometimes I get the distinct impression that my feelings are not actually my own. I have been plugged—Matrix-style—into the parasympathetic circuitry of the universe.