Before and After

That key is from a yoga studio I taught at. It's from before.

Before, when we lived in the other house. The house we'd lived in for twenty years. The house ten miles and a universe away. The house I thought I was ready to leave but instead grieved like a dead friend.

It's from before, when my husband's parents were sick, but not that sick. Not sick in a way that breaks you, grueling and relentless. Sick in a way that makes M and I scream at each other because we're tired and scared and it's gotta come out somewhere. Sick in a way that when the interminable finally, at last, mercifully does actually terminate, you're relieved in a way that must always be the quiet part, because there is no grief, just shattered emptiness.

The key is also from before a world-wide pandemic (isn't this redundant?). It's from when the biggest hazard in teaching Pilates was being part of a joke about rich white women. When eating snacks from a giant bowl at a party seemed like a fine idea.

Before is really not that long ago. But waking up here, somewhat suddenly, in the after, I don't know how to get back. Sure, I've stopped stalking the other house. The in-laws are resting in their marble "condos." (I'm probably still unfilial but this is their joke, not mine.) And I'm fully vaccinated.

And yet...I still sit around the house in sweats with holes in the rear. I'm waiting...for something. I suspect it's bravery, the bravery of removing that key from the ring, going back out into the world, and looking for some new doors.