On the Marking of Years
19.
And then the questions dissolve, and I sleep, only to be awakened again.
It is a hard thing, being awakened. I try not to mind it at five in the morning when there is someone jumping on my head. I think of all the people who did not wake up, and the people who long for noise, and the wind outside marking the day from every other day, saying that today will be a high of seventeen degrees, unlike yesterday, which was only fifteen. Seventeen degrees, with a wind-chill of negative two, somehow seems like a blessing, and I try to think of it as such, and lean into the pattern of its longing, and think, At least there’s not a blizzard, not today.
In fact, the blizzard will come tomorrow, or rather tomorrow evening into the morning. There will be such snow that everyone will be tasked with simply living in it—or through it—with clearing out and trying to make space for the car. There will be me, wondering why we have chosen to live in a place of such hardship. Knowing that there is hardship everywhere, and in most places far worse than here. There will be the fact of my children poking me on the shoulder, playing the “hurting game,” and patting me on the head, playing doctor. There will be such silence in the streets.