THE THREAD | A politician, a lawyer, a museum administrator, and a writer walk into a bar.

A politician, a lawyer, a museum administrator, and a writer walk into a bar. Except this isn’t actually a bar, it’s just four stools pulled up to my kitchen island counter now covered with beer cans and wine bottles. And we’re actually just four tired parents, hanging out on a Friday night and coping with raising six kids in a quarantine pod during a global pandemic. And there isn’t going to be a punch line here because this just isn’t funny anymore.
 
The politician is squinting. “What’s that?” he says, looking at something in the next room.
 
“Oh, that?” I say. “That’s a glue stick taped to the light fixture with painter’s tape.”
 
Today was my day to watch the kids. It did not go as planned. Nothing goes as planned. I tell him that I vaguely remember a moment earlier in the day when one of the four-year-olds came up to me saying, “Can you put this up there?” and I must have helped her tape a glue stick to a light fixture, because yeah, there it is.
 
The politician shrugs. “Makes sense.”
 
At this point, much makes sense, and much does make not sense too.
 
This all started one afternoon back in August. I’m the writer married to the lawyer, and we were sitting on the front porch with our neighbors, the politician and the museum administrator, all of us fumbling to find the right way to ask, How the hell are we going to do all of this?
 
All of this meant what every parent in America has been forced to do this year: raise kids, educate them, and work—juggling all at once. Each of us loves our work and each of us loves our kids, so we were in need of figuring out how to begin a new school year, take care of kids, manage their school work, keep them healthy, get our work done, refrain from filing for divorce, contain any existential dread, and all the while not contract a virus that has no regard for our concerns, life goals, or to do lists.
 
We made arrangements. Each of us would take one day of the week to watch the kids. That covers Monday through Thursday. We would alternate Fridays. We agreed to do the bare minimum for schoolwork. We agreed on basic rules on food, screen time, outdoor play, etc. We agreed to set incredibly low expectations of ourselves.
 
I fear our titles and occupations make us sound more exceptional than we are. We’re a dime a dozen right now, just your average white middle-class urban-dwelling do-gooders who have navigated this year the best we know how, and right now things are going rather fine considering that everything has turned to shit.
 
Right now a child is busting into the bar-which-is-my-kitchen and she is dressed in nothing but a cardboard box. She is my daughter. Combined with the other family’s twin four-year-olds, we have come to simply call them The Sisters. My eldest son combined with our matching eight-year-olds are called The Brothers. These simple terms aid us when we forget the actual names of our own children.
 
The lawyer and I, we’ve had a good therapist this year. When the lawyer told our therapist how she spent the first few months of the pandemic obsessing over our trips to the grocery store, you know what the therapist said? She said that everyone is experiencing this year as an existential threat; even if your basic needs are met, you have still been forced into a mental state of survival. Your mind focuses on food, your body focuses on anticipating harm, your heart focuses on the proximity of those you love.
 
You can’t help it, she said. That’s why you bought the 25-pound bag of flour at Costco in April. Reason had no say.
 
In what used to be called normal times, I would talk to the city councilman about things like transportation policy or storm drains, or I would pose interesting questions to the museum administrator about the latest exhibit. But normal means nothing, and tonight I am talking to them about butt wiping instead. This afternoon I heard a wild shriek coming from the bathroom. I raced to see who had been beheaded. Then I had to have a conversation with one of the sisters about the difference between getting your head chopped off and needing help wiping your bottom, and how the latter doesn’t need to sound like the former. I sometimes talk like this to four-year-olds. It’s not effective.
 
But for now, I forget about the butt wiping. I ignore the cardboard child and redirect her back toward the television showing Christmas Chronicles, which they’ve watched at least half a dozen times already this week. I’m tired of kids right now. Specifically, mine and theirs. I want to talk to grown ups tonight. I pose a topic: “What’s one interesting thing you’re working on?”
 
The politician says, “Thank you!” Then informs us he can’t think of a damn thing he wants to talk about other than his research for his impending escape to southwest Texas.
 
The lawyer launches into a captivating tale of how Clean Air Act regulations apply to railroad locomotives yet it is unclear if the liability lies with the manufacturer or the train operator and a child has now entered the kitchen again to retrieve a cheese stick and is slamming my kitchen cabinet open and shut and I don’t give a damn, just, here, take the cheese stick and can we get back to adult talk please?
 
The museum administrator tells us about how the pandemic has altered everything for museums, from traveling exhibitions and trades between museums, how the art transportation industry has entirely and now a different kid has entered the room complaining of a cut on her finger that none of us can see. The politician and the museum administrator look at it and say, Oh, it doesn’t look too bad, and meanwhile I scoot over to the shelf where we keep a jar of bandages, which we distribute to kids as generously as we do cheese sticks. Here, I say, have a Wonder Woman bandage and go back to Christmas Chronicles, byeee!
 
Here’s the deal. We’re good parents. We’re decent people. We’re lucky to have what we have—the work, the security, the support we offer each other. And at the same time, I’m tired. We’re tired. The children never go anywhere. They consume so many cheese sticks. We worry over the failures we imagine.
 
I’m at a loss for how to end this story. This story isn’t over yet. It seems it might never end. How do you write that?
 
A politician, a museum administrator, a lawyer, and a writer walk into a bar. A child appears and asks for a glue stick.


 

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What I'm listening to: Glen Phillips' Swallowed by the New, Handel's Messiah, Dolly Parton's Holly Dolly Christmas
What I'm reading:  Claudia Emerson's poem "Pitching Horseshoes" 
 

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Hope you're hanging in there,

Andrew