From The Vault: Expand & Contract
* I decided to post this one today because it's eerily similar to my last night. Some things never change. :)
October, 2013.
I never slept last night.
Oh, I had every intention of sleeping. There's no way a sane woman forsakes sleep when she is the mother of two boys just this side of full-blown bonkers, or when her husband will be leaving town for the weekend, abandoning her to the children, the laundry, the dishes; the post-apocalyptic-looking house. Nevertheless, I never nodded off once in the wee hours.
I read Anne Lamott for an hour or so before I knew I wouldn't sleep, puzzling, chuckling, and underlining her brain. I enjoy her writing very much, and I'm always fascinated by her point of view. I like when my grid is challenged to expand and contract, and this is, perhaps, why I couldn't sleep; I was too busy expanding and contracting to clock out.
SO I opted for a more numbing approach: The Walking Dead.
Here I am, this housewife zombie herself, watching the end of the world unfold by way of the slow, lumbering undead. And there I go, expanding and contracting again.
My mind is dangerous. I mostly love it, but at night I'm a little scared of it. "Be quiet, Candi! Tiptoe to your pillow. Whatever you do, don't coax it alive at this hour." My body says it's had enough of "expand and contract" from Miss Smarty Pants up there. Says it's time to let the lungs take over a while. I'll give them an hour when the crazy boys I love take their naps. Until then all I can do is expand and contract.
But that's all any of us have really, expanding and contracting. Universe, planets, air, mountains, hearts, waistlines. Expand and contract, the chorus sings it high and mighty.
The day we quit singing is the day we die.