An Echo of Boy

There is a half empty juice box in my hotel room fridge.  As I pour a glass of wine for myself in a plastic tumbler, I’m standing eye to “eye” with a Tupperware container full of old, soggy peanut butter crackers.  Two little baby washcloths are hung to dry over my shower curtain rod.  Earlier in the evening I opened my bottom dresser drawer and found one child’s size 6 flip flop.

(After having him walk into one too many rest area bathrooms with only one shoe, we finally gave up our magical thinking that perhaps the missing shoe would just conveniently appear on the car floor by his feet, or maybe in the corner of some as-yet unsearched pocket of the diaper bag, and so took a twenty minute detour to at a Wal Mart halfway along our journey and buy him another pair.)

I miss their noise, I miss their havoc, I miss them a lot.  My room is too quiet and big.  I’ll try to fill the silence up with cheap wine in a plastic tumbler, and maybe tomorrow night I’ll go to a movie or take a bath or some luxurious thing.

Forever after, this will be known as The Summer That Tried To Kill Me.

Or maybe there will be no forever after, because The Evil Summer of Death will actually succeed.  I will be vanquished.  O Summer, thou art a mighty foe.  Thou Summer with thy infernal packing and unpacking and repacking and driving and child-schedule-messing and OH GOD, THE ROAD TRIPS, THE ENDLESS ROADTRIPS WITH A SINGLE BACKYARDIGANS EPISODE PLAYING ON REPEAT*REPEAT*REPEAT*REPEAT.

Soon it will be over.  I am three quarters of the way through our separation.

Wine, do your magic.