I was looking forward to a topic other than death this week, then I woke up this morning and got my news (read people.com) and found out about Luke Perry and y’all, I am JUST DONE. Little Brother’s preschool teacher is still gone, which feels like a shock every day to me (and LB, I suspect). Dylan McKay has left the building and by all accounts, his real-life persona was a wonderfully kind man, which is always the way it goes, isn’t it? (Take some of the crap ones, PLEASE!) And apparently it’s bat mating season and our neighbour’s tree is Ground Central for Bat F*cking, so we get to watch the world’s creepiest animal circle our house every night then screech and scream us to sleep.

I can’t. I just can’t.

I couldn’t, either, when I got off a boat the other day after seven hours of drinking, swimming, and dishing with friends. I couldn’t so much that The Husband had to come get me, The Kid and LB in tow, and as I carried LB inside I tripped up some marble steps and we both tumbled to the ground. Later, I was holding TK and falling onto the bed with him and we both hit our heads against the wall. “Mommy, you were pretty clumsy last night,” they told me the next day, as I envisioned an intervention filled with only non-Australian friends because they’re the ones who started all this socialising anyway, while battling guilt over how much wine is too much yet again and searching for grace in the grappling.

On the boat, I had the kind of epiphany that sounds brilliant in the moment, when the sun is shining and champagne is flowing: “I know why we like wine so much! It’s because it’s the one thing we don’t have to share with our kids!” I cheers-ed myself to that then thought later about the fantastic podcast I heard that falls into the first of the following categories that are officially My Listening Jams: psychology, celebrity interviews, parody, and nightmare-inducing true crime. The particular episode I had listened to on a masochistic hike was about affect regulation and dysregulation and IT SPOKE TO ME, as such things usually do, about the gray areas that we try to reduce to black and white in order to simplify lives that are meant to be nuanced and colourful. Which maybe sounds like an excuse to drink more champagne and maybe is, but I’m in the “working on it” phase and that’s gotta be okay for now.

I also thought later, post-boat and knee injury and head trauma, about what it means to have safe zones in my life: things that feel comforting or hallowed or just good either because they’re mine alone, or because they buffer me from the things I fear. Things I fear: bats, social anxiety, alienation, grief and sadness, loss. Things that feel safe: family (sometimes?), wine (sometimes?), grace (sometimes–it has a randy streak, after all).

We set about trying to make ourselves safe–trying to regulate life, ourselves–in a world that is anything but. Two men in their fifties that I either knew personally or televisionally are gone, and this is not safe. It does not make sense, or line up with reports from annual physicals. I try to buffer myself from awkwardness in social situations and often…overdo the titration, let’s say. I want to be my children’s refuge, their safe space, and I end up losing my temper, or…being clumsy.

I cannot do with more to-do lists or self-improvement or guilt spirals. What I can do with is friends who laugh and commiserate, children who forgive and have wonderfully short memories, and a husband who never stops showing up. A grace that never does either.

I read recently about a British mother’s invention called a “hug button” that she devised to help ease her child’s separation anxiety while he was at school. So every morning, I find myself drawing one on my hand and TK’s (and a backup one on our wrists; LB passed on both). The red sharpie’s dye seeps into my skin throughout the day, sweat from hikes and anxiety bleeding it deeper, and TK and I press these buttons to send each other love. And it helps. He’s not crying at drop-off any more.

There’s also the kid who requested that TK be his partner in robotics because TK is the calm one–a safe space. There’s the way LB arranges the faucet handles the way he knows TK likes them–a habit that was driving me crazy until I saw the safe space LB easily made for it. There is the way at the end of the day, when the four of us pile onto the couch together, the bats screaming outside and the wind and world buffeting at the windows, and the grief and anxiety haven’t left but the grace is bigger now, our limbs digging and pressing into each other, hug buttons active, safety an elusive mystery that, for now, feels real.