Happy

“I’m happy,” he said. He feels peaceful, his whole body calm and sinking into me, both of us sinking into the chair. He becomes a totem for me, a quiet sacred object around which I circulate what I still know for sure. I can still care for him; he still comes with a schedule and boxes to check, his needs are still assuaged by morning hugs and daily chats and whatever I can fix him in the toaster and deliver to the couch. 

I remember this time once, my brother and I floating down the Colorado in an inflatable canoe. We were in college and idiots, not wearing life jackets. Sudden rapids over-turned our entire two person apparatus of tanned limbs and unused paddles, and we were plunged into roiling depths. Immediately my leg was tangled up in a rope attached to the canoe and though upside-down, I remained close enough to the surface that once I was able to orient myself, I simply grabbed the side of the boat and floated through the rest of the rapids, catching my breath and spitting water and the ends of my hair out of my mouth. 

My brother, bound in muscles and youth and thrown completely outside of the boat, was left to fend for himself in the angry water. And he struggled. I learned this later, when he admitted it with shining eyes, that he truly thought he was going to drown. He also told me that he thought I was already dead.

How tenuous, that filament between life and death. Where once we were breathing and then suddenly we aren’t. And how strange this courage—his courage—in the face of such fear. 

A couple of weeks ago, when Covid-19 got real, we couldn’t imagine what it looked like. We laughed still because we didn’t know how to process what was happening. Incredulous could be the word. Or shock. That feeling in the body that registers as laughter but might be crying without tears. An absurdist sort of humor. I remember a simple 14 days ago, still joking about the toilet paper apocalypse, and lying with friends on a couch built for 20 (there was space!), and drinking pisco sours. We figured we were “social distancing,” that our simple group of seven was still safe, unable to fathom how surreal our world would look 48 hours later. 

And now? It’s the feeling of impending doom that gets me. It’s that fear in the face of a wall of white water. It’s the courage in defiance of that possible drowning. It’s that we still can’t register that we are dangers to each other, that we can’t see people, that anything we touch or breathe could be an enemy. 

It’s that we have to stare straight into this truth: that many among us have no food and income to sustain this pandemic. It’s that the devastation of those lives feels immediately  different than the devastation of ours, and that though “pain is pain,” and none of us will make it out of this pandemic unscathed, I am already overly-anxious at the depth of those battle wounds. Some will just scar over, silver smooth on the skin, and some will kill—a slow bleed, a slow asphyxiation, no quick fixes, no band-aids or ventilators.

It’s the feeling of loneliness, the feeling of going crazy. It’s the wondering about how this will all look if it ever goes away, and: will it ever go away?

So when he says, “I’m happy,” with the plainness of truth, I am struck. His eyes are so innocent and earnest, his body like a blanket over me, heavy with ease and relaxation, and a belly that is rounder since he’s been home all day with food that he likes and no soccer games at recess. 

Then he says, “I just like you here.” 

I try to talk it through with him. I ask, “Is it different when I’m not here?” He says no. He reiterates: “I just like it when you’re here.” 

I’ve started working again, in my own way. Part of this means I leave to write. It is the only way. I can be half productive at home, or I can leave sometimes and allow my body to settle into the rhythm of words: reading, rereading, the poetry of journaling. Song lyrics, and music itself, and groups of writers around a warm yellow table, and the din of coffee shops, and the silence of blank desks, and books upon books of writers who inspire me. 

I love being home. But home is also a different sort of workspace.

During self-quarantine, the guest bedroom has become a respite for whoever needs some alone time plus a change of scenery. It’s in a state of flux and a bit cluttered, but the bed is new and the bedding feels slippery and cool. I am in there on Sunday evening, trying with no luck to make my way through a series with subtitles. My little guy sidles up next to me, having left me alone for a delicious hour of separation and Italian dialogue and the window open and the glow of bedside lamps on. “Are you writing?” he asks. “I’m not.” “But you’re alone in here,” his eyes are wide, “Why aren’t you writing? You could just write here.” 

“I could!” I say, as though I’ve never thought of that. As though it never occurred to me that I could try to feel free in a neutral space in a big space called home. That I wouldn’t need to leave to a separate building in a separate city to find that real space to breathe big gulps of life after what sometimes feels like a trip to the bottom of the river, what feels like drowning. I just lost myself a little; it was my own fault. Writing alone has become the tether wound around my leg, the thing that will save me. 

“Can I sleep here with you?” He’s on to his next line of questioning.

“I wasn’t going to sleep here,” I respond. 

“Aww.” He’s genuine, “but I really wanted to sleep with you.”

So we sleep together, a slumber party in our own house. His head warm and sweaty against me all night because we are perpendicular instead of parallel, and my body is pushed to the very edge of the mattress. 

I will always stay on this edge, just about to fall off, just about to go under, just to give him room, just to make sure he’s happy. But sometimes, I will make us both sleep alone.