Cabin Fever

By Beck

I’m really static-y right now. Every time I’ve kissed my kids over the past week, they’ve managed to get a considerable static-charged shock from me. It’s a blessing that we don’t have carpets – particularily SHAG carpets – or the static build-up might have reached dangerous levels by now.

Winter comes as a bit of a shock to me every year. I mean, I remember that it’s boring and worrisome – constantly keeping my eye on the weather conditions to see if my husband will make it home safely from work and my kids from school – but it photographs prettily and there’s Christmas and I think that softens our memories and keeps us from bolting to Arizona while the bolting’s good. And so we think of skating and the surreal glistening of ice on bare branches and a black cat running across a snowy yard like an splash of ink.

Right now, though, we all have the mid-winter blahs – I’m housebound, almost, and feeling a tad stir-crazy; my husband has to drive to work in the icy dark and my kids eat their before-school breakfast staring out into a lifeless, sunless world. After school, we squabble and watch tv until bedtime and everything lacks something – probably a decent amount of sunlight, really, whatever it is that normally illuminates our family. And so right now the only spark of light is thrown off by the shock of contact between us when anyone kisses.

The Baby is dancing raucously to loud morning music right now, a little wild spark herself. And my older two kids – aaaagggh – are fighting. Years from now, all I’ll remember is the photographic version of this time – not the boredom and the aggravation and constantly having to break up fistfights, but rather the pretty version, my kid laughing with snowflakes in her hair,  the three of them dashing out into the winter white, bright against the snow.

Beck blogs at Frog And Toad Are Still Friends.