The root.
There are worse things. But still this is the crux of all worst things. The civil war, the pillage, the fire, the flood. And. And you have lost your child. Your charge and love. The missing piece that makes restoration, conciliation, renewal incomplete. This is the calamity nestled within catastrophe. This is the exponent to tragedy. I can’t really compare myself to the mothers we catalog now: stories from headlines and hearsay. It’s not Kigali, it’s not Birkenau. At least it’s not… But at the core, in my privileged compendium of healthy child, spouse, home…etc. that fearsome root anchors.
The future.
Our life is wild now. The veil of safety has been removed from our liminal box that hangs between the formulas of the microcosm and macrocosm. A flock of shoes roosts above our heads, waiting to rain down. An armory of stringed swords hovers at every turn. Those vultures, once phantoms, have materialized in the corners of our eyes, permanent fixtures of the view. We don’t expect. We add tentative clauses to our plans, “if it happens that way”. We touch wood, cross fingers, incorporate futile gestures to deflect harm. We balk at forecasting. “How can you be so sure?”
I know there are things that can be made of this. Those other mothers go on, plodding through days and weeks. Now graceful, now angry, now bold, now disconsolate and so on we all walk a wire without the net below. What they and I know: there never was a net. Our next charge, another step.
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