Homework

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and I have nothing to read at my writing class, nothing worthy of writing about. Oh, sure, lots of stuff has happened to me in the past three months, but getting myself to the page and forcing my fingers to fly across the keyboard has been all but impossible….very similar to my flights of fear at the thought of going to the gym.

I went to the gym this morning, god damn it, and here I am, typing furiously onto the page, one hour before class is supposed to start. I will do my homework, god damn it again.

I thought of many things to write about. I thought, I can write a piece titled What I Did on My Summer Vacation. I could write about the heartbreak of child support mediation with your ex husband; the anger, the namecalling, the sitting in silence as we take turns railing against each other. And then I could write about the panic I felt when he landed in the hospital, in excruciating pain, and I worried that he wouldn’t make it, and the glimmer of hope that emerged that it might be possible to be civil to one another, afterall. I could write about my 16 year old’s encounter with the law which involved him being arrested for resisting the arrest of two African American boys that were being harassed by a red neck police officer in Colerain township…I was so proud.

Or, I could write about the delight I felt when morning after morning, as I took my coffee outside, a pair of goldfinches greeted me from their feasting on my plethora of garden flowers…and the despair I felt when I found the female dead on the stones of my waterfall, a victim of my carnivorous cats, who couldn’t even bother themselves to eat the tiny little body. I could write about the tightening in my chest when I counted eleven Swallowtail and Monarch butterflies flitting about my summer flowers and the powerful sense of honor I felt at having them visit my yard.
I could write about the surge of pride I feel every time I look at my sons, and the easy camaraderie that has developed between the three of them.

I could write about the frustration I feel every time I allow a man who has hurt me back into my life. Why, oh why, do I do that!!?? I could write about the soap opera that is my love life and the lack thereof. I could write about the powerful sexual energy I get the week after my period, as if those last few eggs of mine are screaming LAST CHANCE, LAST CHANCE in their quest to find compatible sperm. Don’t worry, I’m not listening to those eggs.

I could write about my new puppy. Her mother, Morgan, a ten year old bitch who hadn’t been in heat for three years, belongs to a friend of mine. She won a vacation from work and took her dog back to her sisters while she sunned her self on the island of Tahiti. Her sister is a dog breeder, and when Morgan found herself around all those other dogs, her eggs screamed for attention, too. They sequestered her, but the big, Golden Lab stud named Ranger, got her through the fence. Through the fence. She must have wanted it really bad.

It scares me, really it does. Granted, it’s unlikely that you will see me sidling up to any fences, but seriously, this middle aged rush of hormones gets me worried sometimes. I mean, I am the mother of three teenagers. I am an accountant. I scratch my head and think What the Fuck!

Which, quite frankly, is basically the jist of the problem.