Without a doubt, Wednesday mornings in this school year have become the most depressing. ‘Truancy case…CPS case…no, supposedly moved to Florida, Grandma lost contact with them…no, that’s a truancy case…nope, another long term CPS case’.

‘Well, what do we do about it? Who is actually accountable? Um…actually no one at this point’.

‘Okay…continue. ‘We left materials on the porch and snapped a photo to prove I did it…house was dark, no one answered the door’. ‘Okay then…next class…long term truancy…nope, CPS…nope, no follow up…that phone number doesn’t work…nope’.

We are losing our kids…

Scenes from Zoom: a set of dresser drawers with handles…two bare feet waving back and forth in front of a floor fan…one child snacking…another child practicing raising his left eyebrow up and down…life on the underside of a bunk bed…in another home; a place I shall never visit.

I dreamt of Norway again and was suddenly on that train because someone mentioned Norway and I went willingly. And you were there, of course. Opening and closing the wallet. Opening and closing your wallet, convincing us to eat reindeer meat with red peppers and we could barely do it. But we ate our portion.

And then, ‘Look, over there! Look!’ And we shoved and scrambled over to the window and there in the middle of a brilliantly sage and kiwi grassy meadow, rising in sunshine mist by the fjords…those stunning fjords…there was a child standing and waving madly. A blond headed cherub in a bright red woolen sweater just standing and watching; waving to the moving strangers on the black smoking train. ‘Wave!’ you said excitedly and we did…waving and stretching out to him just before our train slid into the mountains and I knew then as I know now…it was a snapshot I could not take.

I will never see that child again. And you are gone, for now. Your wallet is closed and stored somewhere. But that is temporary, of course and the train is still running.

Now I’m in the Empire State and I would rather be on that line between Oslo and Bergen, waving madly at the child I can not see…

While Rome is burning all around me, I might as well toast marshmallows.

Carpe Diem…

The entire day…all day…has been taken up with all things ‘lawn’. Pulling the John Deere Tractor out of the shed. Discovering there was ‘fixing’ to do. Two phone calls; English and Spanish, three trips to Home Depot, 1 trip to Lowes, manual reading, purchasing gas, discovering a missing chisel on the front seat of the truck. Apparently we have been sitting on top of the chisel for a time now.

More reading, changing oil, trips to the basement, testing a battery; we reach the twilight hour of 6:30pm…the lawn is not mowed and there is a deafening silence in the backyard next to the shed where Eli is tinkering.

For dinner I have had…cheese.

This is what comes of leaving the house…