Old Diaries Vol. 2
January 1997/August 2020
Monday, January 27, 1997 - Dublin (13 years old)
I really hate Mondays. In school we went to a boring music recital and I got kicked out because Edel was making me laugh. After school I went to basketball practice and it was bloody boring too. I did my homework when I got home. That was also boring. So you can see why I hate Mondays. Me and Emma havn’t [sic] made up yet. She’s really angry with me.
Monday, August 24, 2020 - Charlottesville, VA
There’s a store just off the Charlottesville downtown mall that sells…stuff. Charlottesville abounds with this kind of frivolous store, a sort of elevated gift shop too expensive to even consider browsing, and that says something unflattering about this town but I don't have the energy to be scathing about it today. This store, it has lots of stuff in its window display - greeting cards and children's books and framed inspirational quotes in brush calligraphy font, straight out of Pinterest. The items in the window change every couple of weeks and in the last few days, when I've walked by, I've been admiring a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle featuring various types of jellyfish. Something about the cerulean blue of the underwater scene, and the bright coral tendrils of the jellies makes me *want* it. I imagine pouring the pieces like water out of the pleasing cylindrical tub they come in onto a large, polished cherrywood dining table. Not only do I not own a large dining table, I don't own any kind of surface that might accommodate such a puzzle. There is not an inch inside our house that isn't full of...stuff. Teethers, stuffed animals, bills, magazines we don't have time to read, board books we keep trying to force our kid to like, empty water glasses, half-full mugs of coffee and tea, cloth face masks and cylindrical tubs of Clorox wipes. We've been in here for six months, working and sleeping, tidying and undoing and arranging and rearranging, working our days from every possible angle to try to achieve that elusive, satisfying click before giving up and going to bed.
The large (yet cozy) house where a puzzle might be worked and leisurely completed is not this house.
At the beginning of all this, stores that sold, among other things, jigsaw puzzles moved their stock of puzzles to the front of the store for the first time probably ever and then, when their stores could no longer operate, they posted about their puzzles on social media. A great way to spend long days in the house! Make quarantine fun! These things will keep you occupied for months! My local Buy Nothing group on Facebook, a lively and extremely active neighborhood freecycle project, was suddenly full of posts from people either offering or seeking puzzles. I think about those puzzles now and wonder where they are, whether they're completed. I remember seeing those posts and thinking I should try to snag one for myself. And then I remembered, haha, I have a three-month old. No puzzles for me.
It's not that one cannot be bored with a young baby. Quite the opposite. Boredom is part of the deal. Feeds, naps, changes, throwups, naps, family dance party to kill 20 minutes before bed, bedtime, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam. The problem (if you think of it as a problem - I often do) is that there isn't much good relief available in 2020 for the kind of monotony one experiences in the day to day of minding babies. When the day is done (and it's rarely ever 'done'), the only sensible option is to fall asleep as quickly as possible so that one might at least feel rested by the time the next day begins with a scream.
As a child, I cataloged my boredom incessantly. I have always been impatient. I spent a lot of time wanting things to be over (classes, mass, drives) or desperate for things to arrive (Saturdays, horse-riding lessons, trips to the beach) and I frequently found myself in situations where watching the clock and trying to trick time into moving faster seemed to be the only option available to me. It never occurred to me to occupy myself constructively, by listening in class for example, or enjoying the music recital, or taking pleasure in doing a good job at my homework so that by the time I looked up from the page it would be, like magic, dinnertime. In recent years, but before I had a child, I became fond of loftily declaring that there was no excuse for boredom, that I never got bored, that I would in fact be *delighted* to be bored, but no, there was always something to be done, and with a world-weary sigh I'd continue scrolling endlessly on my phone while thinking about replying to some emails.
When Elliott was three months old, the world shut down, and I don't mean to make it all about me, but we were just getting going, him and me. The two of us had spent a lot of time together in bed, on the sofa, in bed again and so on, and by early March, with the weather beginning to brighten and my physical complaints beginning to lessen if not disappear completely, I thought we might venture out to explore the world - he as a total newcomer and me in a new persona. We made our debut at a breastfeeding support group where Elliott found out he wasn't the only baby and I exchanged numbers with two different new moms, both of whom texted me in the following days to arrange walks or get-togethers. I couldn't believe it. Those desperate, psychotically hormonal postpartum days during which I couldn't imagine ever dressing my broken body again, let alone leaving the house, were behind me.
When public life began to shut down some days later, keeping Elliott safe indoors was an easy call to make. Without thinking about it for more than a moment I shed my newfound adventurousness and battened down the hatches as it were, throwing back on my pajamas and robe and taking once more to the bed and the sofa, scrolling and scrolling while Elliott napped and ate. He was three months old. He didn't need much more than a reliable source of food and warmth. He's eight and a half months old now, and he needs...a lot more than that. We're still indoors, and while I can just about remember the names of the new moms I met at breastfeeding group, I can't remember the names of their babies. Elliott has probably long forgotten that other babies exist. It's just been me and his dad for five months now. I can't say for sure that Elliott isn't bored (he has complaints, but they are most often to do with food or sleep), but it's not in the mix for me. I'm exhausted, depressed, distracted, in pain, endlessly consumed with figuring out what to do about my job or childcare, homesick, hopelessly in love with my little boy and worried about his future.
I may mask up and step inside the gift shop downtown to finally buy that puzzle I've been admiring, not to piece together now, in this life. I would buy the beautiful thousand-piece puzzle as a sort of optimistic doff of my cap to the passing of time, in hopes that a future iteration of this life might have room for some benign boredom.
Your friend,
Helen.