Probably the most comforting thing I could do was drink in bed. When I quit drinking I wrote a list of all the things I pledged I wouldn’t do when I started drinking again and one of the top 3 was drinking in bed. I rarely drank in bed, like once or twice a year. But when I did it was like smoking in bed, combining two favorite pleasures into one. I sat and watched the lawn guy cut our grass from the bedroom window, trying not to let him see me. I worked from home in my bedroom, the same place I slept. Mom thought that was a bad idea (no separation) and she was probably right—but there isn’t any separation. I watched him pick at something on the ground and talk to himself, mumble. Both Dawn and I wanted to quit our jobs, we were having a really hard time with the kids and it put a pall over everything. It followed us around, how depression and anxiety can. I took a long sip from my drink like I was playing the flute, blowing a bubble backwards. Self-soothing. Ginger had a fatty mass that needed removed, it would interfere with her walking. It would interfere with our wallets, too. Lily and I walked to the lake and said it felt like spring. She was getting to the bottom of it, what was ailing her. I felt considerably older. I felt exactly like my dad looked and he had just turned 70. I was just a few production models behind him, in likeness. There was no time to fix the flaws, they just got passed down and I was doing the same to my own in real time. Outside the first night frog croaked, and then a whole bunch followed suit. The sky softened and I sunk back and thought for a while, things are alright.

Categories: Memoir, parenting, prose, writing

Tags: aging, creative nonfiction, existentialism, identity, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, parenting, prose, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer