stuff and nonsense

We’re getting ready to go on vaca for a week at Lake Tahoe, where we’ll stay at the cabin (“Daveland”) for just a wee spot of cash (pay the utilities for the week — sweet!). Vacations of any stripe always mean lots of planning, but this year I’ve planned a little more so than usual. Partly because this is a vacation for 3 instead of a vacation for 7 like last year. Why would planning for 3 involve more planning? Because I’m really planning for two separate weeks — one for those who stay at home (groceries, chores, emergency cash, etc.) and a different week for a single child w/o companions except his dear parents. [The photo above shows 4 of the 5 critters eating smores at Daveland a few years back. Crazy beasts!]Challenges? One of the parents will be doing a full inner body cleanse, and the other of whom will be both indulging in usually forbidden treats like a whole box of See’s chocolates and shiny magazines, as well as working on the switch to vegetarianism (guess who?), while The Boy just wants to live off Flaming Hot Cheetos, Arizona sweet tea and Bagel Bites. One car instead of two. And an extremely well managed budget (that’s another way to say frugal, or cheap, or broke. You feel me, right?).

I’ve been scanning the sale papers for weeks, buying vacation supplies (sunscreen, aloe vera gel to soothe the burns), treats like shrimp for the barbie, good cheeses, and crunchy snacks bought for a pittance with the right coupon, then hidden from view of the marauding munchers who live here. I have used my coupons wisely, including a fantastic one from Groupons that gave me $40 off my shopping trip to the local natural grocery store. That trip included the purchase of some lovely portobello mushrooms, huge organic artichokes, veggie sausages, and a big sack o’ organic bananas going ripe, some of which items I rarely buy because of their expense or rarity. [Note bags of groceries, etc. waiting to go, as well as annoyed Fifi looking on from her perch.]I had a coupon for Real Simple magazine that I used early in July to get the July issue, and then a second one to buy the August issue last week. I feel triumphant somehow with that paltry little scheme, because I don’t subscribe to anything anymore (paper waste, mags have a large carbon footprint, I can borrow/get it used, etc.). I know I’ll enjoy reading these, then will tear out recipes and pages for collage, and eventually they will either be shared, donated or recycled — a once-a-year treat that I’m planning to enjoy on the deck of Daveland.

Of course, that’s not the only thing to enjoy at Daveland. Writing on the deck with nothing but the sound of birds and wind in the trees? It doesn’t get any better. Truly. Not at all. Ever. In the history or future of the world.
But back to my evil plans…oh, no, I mean, my vacation planning. I get those two mixed up all the time.
Made some gorp, which is a 1960s term for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts — including pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, dried cranberries and chocolate chips, too. Good fuel for hiking, which we plan to do Tuesday. Some people call it trail mix, but we’re Californians. You know how we are.
When we stay at Daveland, we always replenish anything we’ve used when we leave. This time, instead of paying extra at the small tourist-priced grocery stores, I bought toilet paper, paper towels and briquettes here, recycled or organic, on sale, etc. We have to haul it up there, but we won’t have to pay the gouge-the-flatlanders prices they charge for basic necessities up there. Unfortunately, we can’t compost or leave any trash outside because of bears, so I have some recycled bags to bring home any cans or bottles, and we will have to make a trash dump every day or so elsewhere. I think —  I could be wrong, but I do think we’re just about ready to go.
We’re looking forward to a quiet week away from it all — but I will confess a little reluctance to go away and leave my beautiful sunflowers, which are blooming deliciously this week. I have a feeling Sally Squirrel and Three Ears (my two friendliest rodent visitors) will probably tear down the flower heads if no one is vigilant about watching. I am actually trying to harvest that seed for bird seed and chickens! I already miss my cats and chickens — certain that no one will talk to them or care for them as I do. Who can keep up my standard, anyway? No one.

Oh, well. We’ll call this an exercise in letting go. Peace out, pals.

the future’s so bright

Yep. Spent the weekend off the computer, mostly. Didn’t go away. Just rested, ate, slept, had a date with Mr. Husband, and puttered. Now I’m looking at the garden (bountiful!), my week (stuff to do!), and my future (exciting!) and thinking about what to do first.
First thing — thank you for the many comments and to people who wrote to me about the June Food Stamp Challenge. I’m working on a couple of plans to further this project. I’ve been asked to write a long article about it this week, which is on my to-do, and am fiddling with a query on a longer project. I’ll let you know what happens with that. And I’ll continue to watch what happens locally and on a larger scale with hunger issues. So you’ve got that to look forward to, my pretties.

Next challenge? I’m not sure it will be a huge challenge, which is OK right now (I’m still recovering from the JFSC and its many reverberations) — but I’m on the lookout for a sustainable white shirt for my husband. I’ll blog more about this soon, but I want to get him a couple of new shirts that are made with fabric that doesn’t poison the planet, made by consenting adults who choose to work there and sew happily with lunch breaks and no chains attached, and in a manner that doesn’t pillage the Earth whilst en route to my closet. That shirt may be hanging in a Goodwill somewhere right now or may be still in a cotton field. I may have to sew it myself. Dunno yet. But we’ll find out, won’t we?

What else?

  • I’m following a friend’s directive to push some other literary projects. Research, editing, proofing, blurbing, freelancing. Stuff. You know, stuff.
  • My garden is blowing up — I made 6 half-pints of blueberry jam today, plus froze zucchini/squash and green beans. Couldn’t hold on to the raspberries long enough to make jam, so I’ll maybe buy some tomorrow at teh farmers’ market. I. Love. Raspberries.
  • We cleaned out the chicken coop (which, coincidentally, rhymes with chicken poop, which makes a lot of flies feel welcome to our yard, and my house, if they can get in. Big black nasty flies. Ugh.)
  • We let the chickies run free on the lawn during the coop-cleanout.
  • Mr. Husband grilled whole ears of local corn and strips of (home-grown) zucchini, along with Saag’s chicken-apple sausages (originally from Oakland, CA), for dinner. Had California-grown watermelon with this festive meal and a nice California pinot grigio, and enjoyed it with the aforementioned fellow and daughter Simone. Happy 4th, on the 5th.
  • Tomorrow is my foraging (shopping/errand) day and I look forward to fresh bread, fruit and veggies, and also ironing. Yes. Because that’s part of making a sustainable household — semi-drudgeful housework and such, instead of convenience foods (like bagged salad — who wants salmonella?)and dry cleaning (cancer, anyone?).
  • And, speaking of JFSC, I did not go and purchase a coffee milkshake, but I did buy a pint of coffee ice cream and ate the whole thing myself (hey — it took two sittings). That’s the kind of glutton I am. I did compost the carton, though.

Yeah. That’s all I have, my peeps. I was thinking about knitting and planting radishes instead of buying them, and going to the beach and flossing more often and collecting empty bottles and buying recycled paper in bulk/on sale for my printer (which was Freecycled) and if I’ll babysit this week and how cool it is that the Western oriole has decided my yard is the place to hang out and how in the world to use my ginormous pressure cooker-canner thing that kind of scares me (I shall call her Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

Other than that, same as it ever was.

Answers!

Wow, great questions coming in from readers near and far. Thank you for reading and for all your interest. This post will just answer questions — I have today’s stuff to write for the JFSC but don’t want to leave you hanging on unfinished business. And, by the way, thanks, Katy Wolk-Stanley, for blogging about me on your NonConsumer Advocate blog. You rock the house! So —

1) Will I write about more sustainable, green, urban homesteading, frugal topics, etc, henceforth? Yes. Funny, this blog started out as a how-to for writers; if you look back in the archive, you’ll see that at least for the first year or so (2004), I ended each post with “Advice to Aspiring Writers” — I was editing the newspaper and promoting my novel at the time, plus teaching night classes in writing of all sorts. But I’ve definitely evolved (devolved?) into the farm-girl-in-the-city, with my garden, chickens, clothesline and jam-pot. You like this stuff? Stick around. If you are a wanna-be writer, you might also pick up some funny tips because I’m still doing that as well. (Ask me about the whoredom of promoting your own books, or finding your passion in what you write, or the desire to throw yourself in front of a train when someone tells you, “You should write a book about my life!” Oh, really? Thanks for the tip…aaaaaagh!)

2. How to clean your oven? Baking soda paste. Add a little water to baking soda, dab it onto the crusty parts of your oven, let it sit overnight. You might also put in a pan of water and warm the oven up a bit, turn it off, then leave the door closed overnight. The paste should work its magic. Don’t think dish soap is strong enough. But baking soda is like a magical ingredient from Narnia or the Lady Galadriel. It does everything. (But it tastes nasty when you get a lump of it in a cookie, so use a sifter, sister!) Word!

3. Why am I not a vegetarian? Long answer, so refresh your beverage and slip off your shoes. Short answer is that I generally am 90% vegetarian, but not for the usual reasons. I’m also a farm girl. I don’t have false ideas about the dear little Bambi creatures who frolic on a farm until Mr. Mean Old Farmer machine guns them and wraps them in plastic and Styrofoam for the grocery store shelf for voracious carnivores. I also know about the slaughterhouse and the factory-type farm, well before Michael Pollan and Food Inc. made them popularly unpopular. Nope. I raised sheep, rabbits, we had cattle and horses, chickens and ducks (no pigs, though). My brother worked at the feed lot/slaughterhouse (I used to wash his bloody clothes). I watched our lambs at slaughter. I’ve watched chickens and rabbits go to their end, too (note — they do make noise). I’ve eaten all those bits and pieces, too. Platter of lamb tongues for dinner? It’s what’s for dinner. Also, we lived in the “Egg Basket of the World,” surrounded by chicken farms and egg trucks. I passed the “egg factory” every day where they candled the eggs, sorted and shipped. Our property was a former chicken ranch (see postcard) with room for 45,000 hens, though we repurposed the land and barns for other animals, and never had more than a dozen chickens ourselves.

So I’m not one of those who is squeamish and unrealistic about animals and meat. I know how it’s done from both sides.

In my house right now, we have 5 people at home, but we are a co-family with 5 kids, and for a while there we had about 3 to 5 extra couch-surfing feral teens, plus a foster daughter. Dinner for 10 was not unusual — in fact, it was the NORMAL state of affairs. And we are so not rich. If we served meat, it was as a flavor enhancer — part of soup or stew or a pasta sauce. I vividly recall one time when we were going to have hot dogs for dinner and I went down to the organic butcher for sustainable hot dogs. It cost me $26 for hot dogs – about $1 each, actually, to feed the crew. Compare that to $1 for a 10-pack of Oscar Meyer on sale and you’ll see why taking the high road with meat when on a tight budget and feeding a crowd may not be feasible. I will blog more on this in the next few days…

If you look back at our menus for the month, we have eaten cheaper meat — chicken leg quarters, hot dogs, bratwurst and salami (all on sale). But these are on the menu once or twice a week, not daily. That is downright unAmerican for the rest of the nation. I am depriving my children and husband of their need for dripping red meat, many people would argue. So do note that we have not eaten a lot of meat, comparatively. (More on this in the final analysis.). Please also note that the JFSC is an experiment for us, and not the way we normally eat. It is an approximation of how we would try to make it on food stamps. I also have some blog up my sleeve about food ethics and where they go when the money is gone. If you can wait a day or two for that, I’ll be thanking you.

How do we really eat, in our “real life” off the JFSC? Not much meat. Very little, in fact. Maybe once a week, but it is sustainable. That means freaking expensive. We choose local ranchers, sometimes buy a part of a lamb or other to share, and I literally ask the butcher, “Do you know what hill this animal came from? Did this animal live a good life?” That makes a dinner of lamb chops into a $50 expenditure just for the chops. Because we choose to eat what I call “happy meat,” we don’t eat it very often. It isn’t factory farmed. I buy our eggs (for now, till my lazy-ass slowpoke hens get a move on) from the farmers’ market, from a farmer who lets his chickens out and allows them to eat bugs and rocks and grass, not antibiotic-laced, genetically modified Monsanto corn. Our fish is locally caught (one tiny example: unless you can see that lobster pot being pulled from the water, you shouldn’t be eating lobster. It has been caught, frozen, and shipped from thousands of miles away — too many food miles to make this worth eating, nutritionally or for the health of the planet). Our fish is on the safe list (visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a free downloadable list of what fish is good, safe and sustainable to eat, while there are yet fish left in the ocean to eat). We use only local dairies for butter, milk, ice cream and yogurt. And we grow and preserve as much as possible. What we do buy, in our “real lives,” is as sustainable as possible. And that sometimes includes meat — happy meat. Two of our 5 children are vegans, though, and I am more often a vegetarian than not.

A final note about the sustainable/vegetarian food we eat. We know it is expensive to eat this way. Thus, we have made considerable lifestyle changes to make sure we can do this. We don’t own a house; we rent. We have two older cars and no car payments. Mr. Husband takes public transportation. My adult daughters pay rent at home. We do not use credit cards at all, ever, and are vigorously paying down whatever debt remains from divorces and past lives. We trade, barter, buy used, fix things, and live simply but richly. I make a lot of stuff. If we want something, we save for it.  Our kids go to public schools, walk, take the bus or BART, and ride bikes, skateboards or pogo sticks. None of my adult daughters has a license, or drives. I drive just 2 days a week, and am whittling that down to 1 day if possible. I work at home. No gym membership, country club, subscriptions, bottled water, shopping as hobby, etc. We use the library, shop Goodwill, read a lot, play sports or walk, ride bikes, practice various arts, etc. I could go on — but this is how it is. It’s all about choices, right?

4. What about your garden and chickens? The hens are not laying yet (click the link to see my little chicks when we got them in February). I expect they will in the next month or so. Our garden is just starting to produce and I just picked 5 zucchini yesterday! There are 3-4 tomatoes ready to pick, etc. But we won’t eat these til Thursday when the challenge is over. I kind of feel like it is cheating to add in this extra food. I didn’t express it well in my previous blog entry, I guess, but we have the privilege of a space for a garden. We really do very well on our typical food budget because of home-grown vegetables and fruit — but that gives me an unfair advantage in the JFSC, so I didn’t use much of our preserves — I did use one jar of fruit salad, and my mom’s jam, but other than that, I stayed away from the other veggies. It is just good timing to end the JFSC now. I’ll be glad to start eating my own stuff and save more in weekly shopping — but it is a different budget than the food stamps. Hope that makes sense. Because, really, we’re not on food stamps, even though we’re on a budget. They’re two different things. Could be mutually beneficial in some ways, but still, trying to make a distinction, and walk a mile in the more typical FS recipient’s shoes.

OK, clear as mud. Thanks for reading — you have added extra shine to my day.

February dreaming

These blossoms have not yet bloomed, but we’re getting to that point. These are mock-pear, but it’s something in February when the cherry and plum trees bloom. Petals falling like snowflakes on the sidewalk. So pretty.

It’s been sunny, with pretend-threats of rain, but no such rain for a week or so. The big storms (such as they are in California) were wonderful, loud and very wet. More, please! However, the sliding glass door leaks, and I had to stuff the cracks with plastic bags to keep the rain out. Now, a week or so later, guess what I find? Little green sprouts in the carpet, and shiny, sluggy-snail tracks near the sliding door. The door-repair-guy is coming Friday. If all goes according to my Evil Plan, I will end up with a French door and windows instead of the hopelessly misaligned and leaky sliding door. G*d willing and the creek don’t rise.

I know you’re dying to know what’s going on with my Iron and Mend Challenge. Well, I’ve extended it another week-ish, since I didn’t finish. Health and time were factors in completing the challenge. I did do quite a lot of ironing, and some mending. But there’s more to do. I have not yet given up. Nor given those items away.

Crafty Poo
Still working on the scrappy sweater, and returned to a cotton ring scarf I was knitting before Xmas and forgot about. It’s close to done, depending how long I want it. I would really like to finish up the yarn, no leftovers. So that’s how long it will be. Maybe with a fringe, too. Hmmm. I had also started a pretty granny square afghan up at Lake Tahoe, in mountain colors (shades of blue, green, brown and white). It is about 4 ft square, but not quite big enough yet. Coincidentally, it’s the same colors as our bedroom. I had in mind to crochet this at Tahoe, and keep the spirit of Tahoe alive with us all year. Whilst watching that silly show American Idol, I picked up the crochet hook and off I went. This could be a good match — watching mindnumbing TV and crocheting a simple pattern. I sense progress.

I added some sewing to my list, because of yesterday’s living room re-do. This is the cheapest living room re-do ever. All we did was rearrange a very few things, and bring in some quilts and plants from another room. We went from a very black and tan room to a creamy/pink/floral room in no time. The black and leopard sofa is still here, but with tan and dusty pink pillows (new covers, from stash fabric, to be sewn soon). A large beige afghan over the black lightens the color scheme. No surprise here, but Simone (daughter #2) and I picked colors out of the wall quilt, designed by me but pieced and sewn by my mom, and we played up the floral and salmony-pink tones. It works with the tans and even with the black. Go figure.

I know, boring without photos. But I don’t want to run upstairs yet again for my camera. Photos when it’s sunny tomorrow, promise.

Mish-Mash Potato Hash
Wrote a few little letters to friends, made a few calls, did a few chores, and now I’m thinking it’s time for tea. Prissy Pants McGee here, huh? I already wrote my poem for today (I’m in a month-long writing challenge, not writing a novel, but a poem per day, which is just as hard. If not harder. Seriously.). I cleaned up. I thought deep thoughts.

Kids are out in the world — Mia on her last few days of her Deep South tour. Austin at school. Simone at school and around town. Ana at work in SF. Patrick, my Mr. Husband, with his nose to the grindstone. And here I am. Trying to make the words flow, the juices run, and keep it all moving.

Advice to Aspiring Writers: Somedays there is only try. Today there is do.

When the Sky Fell

Four young, white women tourists with the Twin Towers and NY City skyline behind them, 1986.
The Twin Towers, 1986. That’s me, white jacket, with sister and two friends.

Rick and I are sleeping, a little late on a Tuesday. It’s deadline day, and we know there is a grueling schedule ahead – a stop to pick up proof pages and photos, last-minute stories to write, an unstable editor’s wrath to face, surely sometime before 4 p.m. when the last page is due at the press. The phone rings. We stretch and rise.

Harold, down at Production, wants to know where the hell we are. “Wake up, man,” he shouts into the phone, Jamaican, the half-laugh in his voice enough to keep us guessing. Is he angry? Is he joking? We can never tell. “You are missing all the news! The world is ending! Airplanes are falling from the sky! Buildings are falling down! Get up, man, you’re late!”

“What the fuck,” says Rick. “What an asshole.” We shower, grab coffee at Lee’s Donuts and drive across town to Harold’s place on San Antonio, where he’s putting the finishing touches on pages before press. I wait in the car with my coffee, making dents in the Styrofoam cup with my nail and waiting for Rick to reappear.

I hate deadline day. I don’t trust the editor. She and Rick circle each other daily, until one or the other snarls, then the place erupts. They sit facing, with computers between them, and call each other names. I sit with my back to them both, hunched and wincing, waiting for the knife at my back, the plea from one or the other to choose sides. Add in the pressure of a deadline and all bets are off. I pick at my cup, awaiting the drive to the office, waiting for shit to fly.

Rick comes out of the house with an armful of proof sheets, his face screwed up. He’s already in a sulk. The shitstorm begins, I think. He plumps into the driver’s seat and says, “Fucking Harold wasn’t kidding. An airplane hit the World Trade Center. The building came down. There are thousands of people dead, Julia. New York is burning.”

He turns on the radio and the airwaves stun us into silence. Tears roll down his face as we hit the freeway. Passengers incinerated in a fireball. The Twin Towers in flames. Unbelievably, a second airplane hits. It’s all on camera. All America sees it happening. People can’t get out. People are jumping from the windows. They are falling like bits of chaff. The buildings tremble and quake. One at a time, as slowly and yet suddenly as a soldier faints when standing at attention too long, they fold in on themselves. Uncounted numbers turn to dust.

All airplanes are grounded. The sky is deathly silent. Schools are closed. People hunker down as another plane hit the Pentagon. A fourth plows into a field in Pennsylvania. In the Middle East, they are laughing at us, they are dancing and burning our flags. Elsewhere, the pall is cast: from Japan, England, Australia, Canada, Germany, the Philippines, literally around the globe, every nation seems to have lost somebody. Everyone in America seems to have lost a friend or a friend of a friend. People are missing. Loved ones are gone from the planet, as if they never existed. Ghosts roam the streets, as strangers hold each others’ hands and pray.

Rick, whose New Jersey childhood made Manhattan as familiar as his own mother’s face, weeps and weeps as we drive.

When we get to the office, the unstable editor barks orders. The publisher has spoken. We have stories to write. She heads to the airport for a press conference, and speaks to local law enforcement about what is to be done. My assignments are to call the superintendent to talk about what this means for the schools, and the bewildered students. And I am to hit the streets in this no-horse town, find the hubs of the community and see how people are reacting.

When I get a minute, I slip outside and call the elementary school that my two younger girls attend. No answer, just the machine. The high school, ditto. I dial the Ex, and he quickly assures me that he has everything under control. School has not been cancelled. The girls are fine. Now he must go. He is an important person in the county and very busy. He must see to his agencies. Everything is fine, just fine. Click.

The sky is empty. Few cars roam the streets. I call the superintendent, take my notes, set them aside and then begin to walk. There is no hub in this town, not even a village square. There is no cannon on the green or city hall. Just two main roads that cross each other, and the Safeway and the Walgreen’s and all the little nail parlors and Radio Shacks that spring up like weeds near a leaky pipe.

I check in at the Chamber of Commerce, a one-woman show, and she says, “I don’t know anything. Try the bars.”

There are three bars located on the main drag, and I stop in, one by one. They’re all the same: dim, with a lasting tinge of cigarette smoke despite the California non-smoking law, and the TV blares. The flickering screen gives blue light to smoking towers. Anchormen and women in their natty jackets show diagrams and schematics, speak to experts and cut away quickly when Mayor Giuliani speaks.

People are drinking coffee in the bars. It’s early yet, before noon, and not a beer or cocktail do I spy. The rednecks and roughnecks in this town share counter space; Harleys and pickups cheek by jowl in the lot, the Confederate flag on the jacket of one, a full body tattoo on another. The bartender is 100 years old. She has seen darker days than this in her own life, known the back of a hand and the taste of bourbon before cornflakes. Her eyes are hard and her makeup a little too heavy. The mole on her cheek sprouts two hairs, a black one and a white one, and she has done her long graying hair in a French twist, fastened with a tooled leather pick that her granddaughter made in 4H.

No one has anything to say. They watch the screen in silence, push their mugs forward when offered more, stir in the Sweet ‘n’ Low without a downward glance, spilling white powder like cocaine on the counter top. I feel I have stepped into a wake, and asking these people how they feel is like asking about their sex lives. You know they have one but it is none of your business.

But it’s my job, to ask the questions like How do you feel? to a bunch of grieving Americans, and prostitute that I am, I ask. They give me the fish eye. They say “How do you think I feel?” and “It’s a sad day.” These ranchers and drunks have feelings, but they are deep wells, and they won’t give it up to me.

Back at the office, I write my stories, then turn to the other pages. I edit and proof Seniors, Pets, and Op-Ed, I hand off Arts and Around Town, then do a wrap-up of Business. I type up some press releases to have at hand in case we’re short. I give the camera back to Rick, who downloads and uploads and gets the page ready for the editor to drop her stories in.

The day flies, and we listen on the radio and the police scanner for more news. It is sick, and sicker. Thousands dead, we hear. Several other buildings have also fallen. Hundreds of firefighters and police officers dead in the line of duty. The Pentagon is burning. The passengers of the other plane fought for control before crashing. They are heroes. The President is flying around in Air Force One. Dead, dead, dead, in three different states. An attack on our country, the first since Pearl Harbor. Be prepared for more attacks. Terrorists are on the loose. They are not afraid to die like we are.

The editor returns, slams her stories together and we finish the front page. The jumps all match, the heads are correct, all the cutlines and photo credits are in place. My stories are non-starters – there is no local connection. There is no local news, except when another methamphetamine lab burns down. There’s no reason to put out this paper week after week except as a vehicle for the Walgreen’s ad. I want to impale myself on my Exacto knife, pour hot wax over myself until I harden and melt like a candle. I final-proof the last page. Rick puts it to bed. The day ends, and we leave.

We have no television; we can’t read the San Francisco Chronicle because it is yesterday’s news. We go home. We have some dinner. Rick is in shock. He calls home and hears more about it from his parents. Otherwise, we don’t talk much. We sleep and rise again, to 64-point headlines that tell all. Our little paper is out on the streets, too, with the “local angle.” The stories look good, if by good you understand that I mean solipsistic, completely irrelevant and not worth the paper and ink that they’ve wasted.

The skies are still silent. News bursts forth from the radio, and we hear more, more, more about the deaths, the numbers, the losses, the devastation, the drama, what to tell your kids, how to deal with post-traumatic stress, how to be prepared. It doesn’t end. Tomorrow is a day of mourning. The next day we will all bow our heads at 11 a.m. for a moment of silence. Then we will say the Pledge of Allegiance. The day after that, there is a national candlelight vigil at dusk.

We drive separate cars that day, and I half-forget about the vigil until, on my way home, I see a girl about 25 years old standing at the corner of Central and Broadway, in front of the kitchy old apartments with the palm trees. She’s wearing a blue tank top and cut-off jeans. Her face is somber. She has a candle in each hand, lit, and is waving them at passing cars. People honk as they go by.

All the way up Central Avenue, I see neighbors with their lawn chairs gathered in semicircles, and candles in their hands, candles in clusters on street corners, everywhere. When I get home and find a place on the street to park, I find a candle and one of Rick’s lighters. The candle was once part of a pair that I used on the big dining table for the holidays, cranberry red to match the tablecloth. The girls wore matching dresses. My parents were there. Annie asks if she can blow out the candles and my mother shows her how to do it, how not to get wax on the linens. Annie splutters enough saliva at the candle to drown it, and no wax spills. My husband pours more wine and laughs, and we all laugh with him.

I press the candle more firmly into the holder and take it out on the front stoop. I am on the second floor and can see McDonald’s across the way, with its primary-colored play structure with the plastic ball pit. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, from 7 a.m., kids are in there screaming. I lie awake and listen to their voices. I collect the balls they’ve strewn into the street. I don’t return them to McDonald’s. I keep them for some reason as yet unknown to me.

My children are now in another universe from me. I cannot reach them. The gatekeeper, my Ex, says all is well, and it’s not my concern. He’ll take care of it. I want to pull my three girls into the circle of my arms and cry with them, tell them the world still turns, tell them I will be there to care for them no matter what happens.

And this, we know, is a lie.

Because the world has stopped. There is mayhem and destruction everywhere, not just in my own little life. But I am dead to the day’s events. I don’t care about any of it. I watch the terror and sadness on the television, in the newspapers, with no other feeling than shame, that I am not with my girls, I cannot reach them, I cannot protect them, I cannot mother them, I cannot shelter them, I cannot cry with them, I have become this useless slag, I have failed at the one thing I am biologically equipped to do, I have scorched the earth black with my own misdeeds, and so the death and disasters on a global scale mean nothing to me. I can’t even clear my vision enough to watch. The depth of my failings is such that it will take me years to feel it, for the horror of this day and the horror of the past few months to fully announce itself. I float down this particular river alone, can’t say how little it all means, of course, not aloud to anyone; there isn’t anyone to tell. Instead, I cling to the one lifejacket I possess, this young fool, weeping into his pillow for a lost city. This ridiculous one-weekend coupling is all I have left. I will cling to that lifeline off and on for three years.

I sit alone on the top step and light my candle. I think I should pray, but that tank is empty, something else to feel guilty for. I sit and do nothing. I sit alone and wait. After a while I blow my candle out and go inside where Rick awaits, to sleep.

“When the Sky Fell” is a chapter from Wedlock: A Fictional Memoir, by Julia Park Tracey