“But sometimes the orchestra plays something in swelling chords of luck and joy, and all I can hear is that one violin sawing out a thin melody of grief.”–Catherine Newman (again)

The other day the thought broke through the daily monotony and stood out amidst the minutiae: how far would I go to protect my children?

It sounds like the tagline to a Lifetime movie, and it was likely born of one too many true-crime podcast listenings, but cue the dramatic irony anyway, because this afternoon I was given one answer, at least, in the McDonald’s parking lot.

The truck cut across a lane (my lane) of traffic after I had already begrudgingly let one car over, and he nearly hit me, the boys in the backseat oblivious. I laid on the horn for a good five seconds, at which point he pulled to a stop and opened his door.

Oh NO YOU DIDN’T, I thought, and watched as he spotted me, then hesitated before stepping forward. I think his goal was just to intimidate me, but I opened my window. “What were you doing?” he griped, to my utter astonishment, as though he were the one wronged, and I fired back, “YOU NEARLY HIT ME!”

“I didn’t even see you,” he downplayed, as if it were a defence, then added the piece de resistance loved by females around the world: “You need to calm the fuck down.” He began to walk away, shaking his head at my ridiculousness.

“YOU CALM THE FUCK DOWN, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! I’M PROTECTING MY CHILDREN,” I bellowed from the driver’s seat, the boys no longer oblivious behind me, and the mansplaining driver whipped back around, so I sealed my point with a middle finger. If we were in America (thank God we’re not), he likely would have reached for his firearm next. Instead, he returned my salute and angrily climbed back into his car.

Well that’s ONE thing I’d do to protect them I thought, as the boys in the backseat fired questions at me about what had just happened. They were squarely on my side, calling the man “not nice” and “mean” and graciously telling me that he needed to learn to drive. I agreed, telling them that it was my job to keep them safe (“and love us,” clarified Little Brother, citing the even more fraught of the two tasks), and, upon repeated postmortem analysis of the event, not regretting my reaction at all. If my children are to see me lose my shit about anything, I want it to be their safety.

But. It’s easy to tell that story. It makes me feel like a firebrand, a bit of a warrior, a Mama Bear (I hate that phrase) who is not to be f-ed with (like that one better). I felt justified, not exactly Jesus-turning-tables-level, because let’s be honest, that illustration is about as mis- and overused as it gets, but nonetheless…I felt strong.

I am so not strong.

I realise how easy it is to be lulled into a rhythm of safety, of sameness, of “I can do this” mentality when routine is in place and waters are smooth. Then a displacing event occurs and I look around to remember that at best, I am docked not in a harbour of calm waters but at sea between storms. That life is not a matter of “arriving” courtesy of my own wits but of being swept around by the same hands that save me.

Or something? It’s just that sometimes I feel the “reset” button has been pushed and I’m left feeling barren of hope and I’m starting over just when it felt like things were evening out.

Last week we were at a playground with The Niece, who immediately made friends because she inherited only her paternal grandfather’s genes, and she told her new friends, “That’s my cousin James. He has an apple brain.” She was stating it as fact, but I searched nonetheless for a mean edge to her voice, wondered at the harmless laughter from her new friends if they were looking for a beatdown. She was echoing what I’d told her the week before, after we’d dropped The Kid off at school and I’d gingerly approached the topic with her, of his different ways of learning and behaving. She’d remained quiet, which made me think she was getting it, until she proclaimed, “All this talk of apples is making me hungry!” Turned out, though, that she had been listening. And was ready to repeat what she’d heard. And there, on the playground, the reset button was pressed and I felt it: the hopelessness, the fear, the worry over how he’ll be seen and treated, which often doesn’t touch the bubble where we live out our usual days, among people who know him. There are the moments that pierce that bubble, though: the mention of high schools, or the pull-up at night (LB right there with him, but three years behind) that precludes sleepovers elsewhere (or at least complicates them), the quirks that can be beloved while inducing an urge for to me walk that line of explaining without sounding to others–or him–like I’m apologising.

And then there’s just the everyday shit, like LB interrupting a peaceful moment at the beach with diarrhoea. Oh, and I tried to take them to see Ant-Man and the Wasp, which was…less than successful. (Loved the first half, tho!)

We are different. He is different. I am different, skewed as I am by the winds of anxiety and depression, an island of belief among people who are fine without it, a writer of words who hasn’t mastered them in person.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING, is what I’m saying. In case I had fooled anyone into thinking I do by showing up here and writing something every week, or yelling at men in parking lots (though that could have gone either way, let’s be honest), or because sometimes I actually do my hair. I am a mess, a ship tossed on the waves: my shins will always hurt because I don’t run right or stretch enough; I overcompensate for social anxiety (and stress) with wine; every time my doctor refills my anti-anxiety meds and reminds me to check in if I ever want to wean off them I laugh because LIFE; and whenever the hard realities of that life encroach, I want to curl up in a ball and run from the responsibility of, for example, navigating my and my children’s emotional (and otherwise) health.

Also, LB is a little too obsessed with Thanos for someone who can’t even sit through Ant-Man.

But my boat always has space for the other people who don’t have it figured out–and plenty of wine.

The other night I decided I was sick of depending on the ear plugs I’ve worn for years to sleep and went without them. What followed was a restless night. The next night, I wondered why I’d tried to be such a hero. We all need help. I stuck those effers back in (that’s what she said) and drifted off.

To close: the boys and I have been going back to the beach, to the rocks where they’ve been identifying several “hideouts.” (Hiding is their latest favourite activity. I relate.) As the three of us crouched into a crevice and watched the water pound the rocks around us, I thought about how all these divets and hidden places have been worn by thousands of years of water pounding at them. How what looks to be the victim of ruthless waves, of storms and weather, can end up looking like design: the very spot where a person can find safety.