Today when I was driving from Madison to the Harvard train, I felt all jumpy and didn’t trust any of the other drivers. I kept thinking someone would just pull over and cut me off – what’s to stop them? I was starting to feel better after a truck signaled to change lanes, and it was obvious – I wouldn’t have missed it. I pulled into the right lane because the glare off the back of the car I was following in the left lane was making me see purple spots – it was high noon. That car then swerved almost to the construction barrier on the left, and veered across to the right, between me and the truck in front of me. Glad I wasn’t following too close.
And nostalgia.
One of the side effects of being ridiculously over busy and sick and stressed out this fall is that I feel like I am not doing a lot of the things I normally do. Like taking pictures of food – I instagrammed my breakfast this morning, and was surprised to see the last time I’d done that was Sunday the week before. Putting food by for the winter, freezing stuff, making applesauce, baking bread. Hosting dinners.
And just hanging out and seeing people and going to music. I miss my kids – I miss when they lived with me, back in the ’90s and early aughts, when they were teenagers and even longer ago when they were little. In some Deborah Madison piece – I think maybe her book about eating alone – somebody said that if you have kids, as you and they age, you don’t only mourn your own lost youth, you also feel the loss of the little kids they used to be.
So it makes me think about and want to go back 10, 15, 20 years, when I thought I had more time – to be creative, and had my kids at home. Or else it’s just that I’ve been playing the album-oriented rock station, instead of NPR, in the car. That must be it – the music is taking me back. Just before the station faded out, after Janesville, past the sports complex where John played soccer a few times, they were even playing Lit.