Family Day

I survived the first official Family Day in the province of Ontario but it was a near thing. A week ago I had a dream about someone I knew over 20 years and purposely forgotten. What is even more remarkable is the strange hold this person has had on my thoughts in the last week. In the end, I decided there was only one way to purge my memory and that was to write it into the book I am writing. Writing is my way of dealing with most anything, and especially, inconvenient memories. As long as I can write it all out; all will be well.

I made my decision to sit down and spew my literary guts early in the am of Family Day. I had made a couple of decent attempts but it was hard to get any traction going as I hadn’t counted on the obsessive compulsive nature of my children. I suspect the deep seated need to thwart all my attempts at writing has been written into their DNA. They can’t seem to grasp that I cannot be interrupted directly or indirectly every other minute and still write more than one sentence. This is one of the reasons I like blogging. Most blog posts can be written with 30-40 interruptions and still get finished and posted. Stories are an entirely different beast.

At one point, the Last Amazon started to read over my shoulder. She possessed a vague familiarity with the people and events I am retelling and twisting. She tells me I cannot use anything I have written because I am cutting it way too close. She declares it all too ‘creepy’ and what if “X” read it. I tell her the chances of ‘X” reading it are way beyond minimal, and in fact, I think the possibility that “X” is even still numbered among the living hovers between slim and remote.

I point out that this is one of the innate problems in dealing with writers – one takes the chance that something of the relationship or one’s character will end up in a novel. She scratches writers off her potential dating pool list. By this point, I realize the only way I could get any peace to write was if I pulled a Jimmy Carter move on them. So I bribed them to leave the house to go see a movie for a couple of hours.

It all works out - even if it took them an hour of hardcore bickering to reach a consensus on which movie to see but no blood was drawn. Once the door closed behind them I was able to get to work. Five hours later I move my head from the computer screen to check how much time I have left before they come home. My heart sinks when I realize they should have been home two hours ago, or at the very least - called by now.

I was absolutely fearless or really, really stupid when I was young. There was nowhere or anyone I was afraid of (which is how I ended up spending six weeks trapped in the middle of a free fire zone without either a gun or a dog in that fight.) But nothing compares to how mind-numbingly dumb and petrified I get when one of my children comes home later than expected. If they were to ride the subway I can’t help imaging all the terrifying possibilities of what could detain them. Maybe they were swarmed and are lying injured, or the subway has crashed, been gassed, was blown-up or they are being held hostage. The really evil part is I can picture all these truly hateful things clearly in my mind and in colour.

The children know this. They have all experienced me cracking under this kind of pressure. They have witnessed me bursting into tears the minute the late one comes through the door. It has made them very conscientious about calling if they are going to be later than expected.

The children arrive home - safe, sound and well fed 5 and a half hours after they left. I burst into tears and ask why they didn’t call if they were going to be late. They tell me they wanted to leave me alone to write which was they decided to have supper out after the movie. My son even handed me a take-out bag. It is at that moment I realize - I will never be really, really old.