My Surreal Night

Everything seemed surreal tonight.

I've been housebound for two days now. The Boy has been sick. He's whiny when he's sick. He calls out, "Mommy?" when he enters a room and I am not in it. If I don't answer right away, he gets scared. "I want reassurance," he says. You'd think he was five and not fifteen. I take a deep breath and say calmly, "Stop scaring yourself. I'm meditating."

He recovered from his fever somewhat this afternoon and at 6:00, I stepped out of the house, with him in tow, to meet my mother for dinner. I get some fresh air and do my duty as a daughter at the same time.

Out of the house, I felt I had suddenly become a surface dweller after years in subterranean existence. Or maybe it's because the air was warm. Or I was hungry. The light outside seemed diffused. I was on auto pilot, cutting through the air and light as I drove. The Boy was quietly focused, obdurate in his insistence that I take him to HMV. I did not.

We ate a hurried dinner, with The Boy whining alternatedly, Can we go now? and Can I go to HMV?

Coming home, we were bumper-to-bumper on a road that was usually light in traffic that time of night. Headlights and taillights all around me. Shadows and bright lights swirled. The steering wheel felt loose. The brakes felt looser. Fatigue overwhelmed me. Everywhere, parked cars where they shouldn't be, blocking traffic. Uniformed men standing in the middle of the road talking to stopped cars. We were driving by a funeral home, brightly lit within, no doubt hosting a viewing. How easy it would be right now for me to get into a car accident, I thought.

But I opened the car window to fill my lungs with the cold night. The Boy beside me, lost in his own thoughts. Past the funeral home, we get past the bottleneck in traffic. I make my way home without incident. I did not enjoy that drive one bit.