I hate my life.

I had the thought as the boys resisted, per usual, the morning routine of getting dressed; as they chose instead to throw each other’s clothes across their bedroom and cry about it while I struggled to swallow and talk around my fiery throat. I thought it as I repeated, over and over, for them to put their lunches in their bags and zip them, to put on their socks and shoes, to get into the car. I thought it as I pulled out of the driveway to their demands for songs. I thought about it as I considered what to make for dinner.

I love my life.

I thought it as I drove over the hill near The Kid’s school that boasts a sweeping harbour panorama. I thought it as a rainbow pierced through the grey sky that was slowly making room for sun. I thought it when both boys ran to me at their respective pick-ups, bursting with the news of their days.

I ran a 5K Sunday morning that was meant to be rain-soaked but happened during a break in the showers. I still struggled, though, considering quitting several times: how good would it feel to just slow down? I pushed through, then walked home, then later in the day got sick: aches and fever and that fiery throat. I wondered, during one of the many fire-engine wake-up calls provided by my throat during the night, if maybe that was why the race had been so hard: because I was sick. My performance looked a lot different with that possibility added to the mix.

On Sunday, during the gap between the race and the onset of aches, I took Little Brother to a movie at the mall that was near the site of a birthday party TK was attending. I outsourced The Husband to accompany TK because it was a stunt gym party and I wasn’t up for a race and an existential crisis in the same day. About thirty minutes into the movie (around the time the popcorn ran out; coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous?) LB announced he wanted to leave. We found the car and headed over to the party, where TK was engaging more with the snack table rather than the parkour activities, fair enough, and he begged to go home. Later that night, I asked them what their best part of the day was.

“The movie,” LB replied without hesitation.

“The party,” TK supplied as eagerly.

What the hell?!

It never fails to amaze me, how they change their stories later. How we all reach for the most readily accessible memory, or feeling. How we supply the easy answer rather than do the hard and dirty work of digging beneath that to the truth that may lie underneath: the fear, the insecurity, the trauma. How we see the past differently from the vantage point of the present. How a slog of a run can later look like a triumph; how a fear-filled party can later look like a good time; how the first thirty minutes of a movie can…suffice. I write this, for example, from a couch, one quarter of the way through a Z-pack, throat still on fire, hating life. But also not? I mean, there is Netflix…and all the books I’ve been meaning to read…

This morning after I’d dropped both boys off at their schools, I trudged up the hill to the car and caught sight of a rainbow. The rain lately, it’s been constant, shades of grey defining our days, defining our moods, defining our health. But then there are the moments when the grey makes space, when the sun peeks through, when it’s both things, all things, at once. The sky somehow always big enough to hold everything.