Act 3, scene 2

Act 3 of 'Covidity: the Musical' is carrying on a bit too long, in my opinion. Perhaps this is compounded by the fact that Act Two was so much shorter, that there was already frustration in the air and the Orchestra was tired.

There is more remote schooling, an autism diagnosis in December.  I re-evaluate my stance on the addition of a hound and on December 24th, Miss Jones joins the tribe. Christmas is quiet in Suffolk.  I wonder at my daughter's wisdoms when new people crop into the Instagram that clearly not real people and agree when she says it is boring and I can have mine back.   

 Work continues to be both solace and torment. Laundry snakes around the house like kudzu. At times, I think the laundry will devour us whole.

The 'two days a week' stretches further becoming more, shrinking to less.  I pack up boxes within boxes for another move, this one closer to source and sigh at the thought of unpacking them.

Weight continues to leave my frame and I am torn between relieved familiarity and concern. That terrifying 6 week stint where I was worried about a diaphragm fail and chastised myself for incredibly poor decisions seems a distant memory. I mostly shift imagery of an afternoon spent tangled with someone else's body out of mind. Those days will return, the body will be someone else's. There will be other someones. Time has only shifted current. It hasn't ceased.

February arrives in exasperation.  My father calls with a 'proposition,' as though he has found my equivalent of a pony to tempt me home with and I stop for a moment to wonder what that would look like.  But I know...a B&B, with a retail space for books and wonders, with a workshop and tiny houses for friends I've met and friends I have not. A large communal table and travel. But that isn't what he offers. No...in fact, it isn't a proposition it a requisition that slides across my desk, as though it were 1996 and he outranked me.  Neither of us active duty military now, I am no longer as eager to please and I jump chain of command when the need arises. But the proverbial 'buck,' apparently stops here (one-way or another) as the last of my matriarchs lives perpetually in 1949, before the husband beat her, before the 8 children, before they found his body in Virginia roadside motel dumpster.  

Maybe Mercury's current retrograde IS having an impact, as that night I dream I am in a car accident with another 'Rachel,' who spells her name a different way. I manage to right myself out of the car. When I catch sight of myself in the broken glass of the windshield, my hair has become Kudzu.  I can smell the brackish salt rising of the riverbanks, easing down to the Gulf Coast and my heart begins to race with hope, fear and a resignation that borders on pleasure. 

Over the next days, the neighbours' drug trade picks up pace. I try not to notice until a note is slipped through my letter box, asking for me to have a 'quiet word' about the late 

I imagine how this would go, how I would feel in my 20s being hectored by an aging toddler pageant queen.  What do you wear to such a discussion? If it were my brother, I'd dress up but down, in leather and a Saints' T-Shirt. I play around with this idea and then remember I am due at Disco at 5pm. So I wouldn't want to have change again. Actually, I don't want to change at all, want to stay in scruffy clothes all day, listening to my audio books. I seek outside counsel from sources. Someone throws up 'dangerous and delusional.' It's a bit harsh but not completely unfair. One of the fairy goddaughters reminds me that I reminde them 'you don't have to attend every argument you are invited to attend.'

I email the local community constabulary - again. They may pop by later and I set aside cake for them. I change back into my scruffies and settle into reorganising my small sanctuaries. The children whir in the background, occasionally intersecting with feral affection. The dog continues to balk when we try to lure her out of doors.

I wake on Sunday the 14th - a day of bleeding hearts and misplaced ideals - sigh. My eldest would be 11 soon. I think of his tiny blue fingers, to swollen to fully grip my finger, of the way his breath rattled in salty sweetness that one time I held him and I sigh as a thin, translucent trickle of colostrum leaks from my breast. I shift, make note to call about the lost MRI. The youngest is 5 now...I haven't breastfed anyone in 3.5 years. This...this is getting old.

We move through the morning with a slow calm. I shift my face towards the sun moving behind the winter grey, ready for what comes next.