Everything Happened | vol. 219

The worst day of 2022

There had been a catastrophic communication breakdown. The five of us arrived, not at a tidal salt marsh named as one of the “Top 100 Important Birding Areas” by the American Bird Conservancy, but at what appeared to be a regular-ass playground in a regular-ass municipal park in a bland mid-Atlantic suburb. “This doesn’t feel like an Important Bird Area,” I said getting out of the car. Nick blanched. This is what happens when I let someone else drive and when I don’t really listen when Nick is talking to me.

I thought I was going to see some leggy shorebirds. My disappointment was parade-float huge. It blocked out the sun. I actually wish it blocked out the sun because the park was bald of trees and the sun was relentless. I didn’t have anything to cover the baby’s bare head. It was late September but still so hot. I wanted to kill Nick. A family was gathered at a picnic area for a child’s birthday party, Bad Bunny bumping on the portable speaker. Not even Bad Bunny could make it better. We had been driving almost an hour.

We located some nearby wooded trails and the opportunity to move briskly in the shade almost salvaged my mood. The kids got worn out, which was the whole point, and we got everyone loaded back into the van. I just wanted to get home and out of the godforsaken state of Delaware.

On the highway, still 45 minutes from home, we blew out a tire.

We pulled over to the shoulder, the almost wet sound of the flat tire turning my stomach. The tire was beyond done. All of the details are too boring to recount but we were able to arrange a tow to a repair shop, but we could not track down a rental. There were no rental cars available in Delaware’s capital that Sunday. While Nick and I were outside gawking at the tire, Jane had eaten approximately 50 strawberries. The baby was mad about being strapped down. Desi had to use the bathroom.

I had no idea how we were going to get home or how we would function for even one day without our van. We can sort of wedge the kids three-across in the backseat of our other car, a beat-up Toyota, but not in a way that was strictly “safe” or “legal.” I’d recently burned out the clutch of that car, and we paid more than the car was worth to replace it. Now, it ran but you had to avoid third gear. The whole thing was about to become another expression of the fox-chicken-grain riddle, which at this point is less motif for me and more…the entire canvas of my life. The very oxygen I breathe. Then, I saw something beautiful. A sign for a Mexican restaurant on the horizon, like a lighthouse beacon. Everyone needed to piss and eat something, and queso has never made a situation worse.

Nick stayed with the van and waited for the tow. I popped the baby onto my hip, held my three-year-old’s hand, and barked at my madman 7-year-old not to get anywhere close to the cars screaming past us. My phone was obviously at 3%. We walked through the prickly, overgrown pampas grass until we were enfolded into the air-conditioned arms of El Azteca. The kids went feral for the free chips and salsa and I got the biggest Modelo available (just a regular bottle of Modelo.) I decided to not try to solve the problem for ten minutes and instead stare at a wall. The Modelo facilitated this. Eventually, Nick joined us and we all ate fearsome portions of Mexican food.

Later, we boarded a Lyft that was lit up inside like the Cash Cab. Riding shotgun was a Pomeranian in a denim vest. For $100, this person decided to ferry us home to our tiny remote town for reasons that are still unclear to me. The blue tube lights throughout the interior felt like a nightclub or a spaceship. When we got home, it was dark. We carried sleeping kids into their beds and I told Nick I was never setting foot in the state of Delaware again. He smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, Evie. You will actually be driving me there tomorrow to pick up the van.”

The day was really bad, maybe the worst day this year. There were a couple of other outrageously bad days. One day in August, Nick was with his dad in Ohio, and Jane was hospitalized for RSV 500 miles away in my parents’ home town. That same afternoon Desi got kicked out of his camp for being too cool (not listening) and asked not to come back, and I got leveled with mastitis. There was the day in November that Jane was rushed to the ER for an asthma attack and there were no pediatric beds to admit her anywhere in the region, so we waited and waited as she gasped for air, liters of oxygen flowing through her nasal cannula, until finally at 2 a.m. she was transported by ambulance an hour and a half away from home. There was having COVID on my birthday.

There were all the times Nick had to go be with his dad and I was solo with 1-3 of our kids and inevitably one of them became spontaneously too sick to go to daycare or school. So many cancelled plans. So many hours thinking about the creative work I wanted to be doing while unable to do it. The months we spent creating a baroque bathing schedule for the kids because the tub, the only one we have, took 24 hours to drain, and a series of plumbers were stumped by the problem. (Nick eventually did the repair himself by crawling under the house with a reciprocating saw and I’m serious.) Not to mention me deciding, in the hairiest year of my life, that I would volunteer to coach (?????) rec soccer (??????) for 6 and 7 year olds (???????)

The other night while I was tucking her in, Jane asked me if I remember when we took the cool car with the doggy in it home from the restaurant dat one day. Buddy, did I ever.

“Dat was so fun. I hope we can ride in dat car again soon.”

Jane, I do not hope that but I won’t rule it out.

(Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, thank you to everyone who has read and subscribed this year. Tell me what you want to hear about from me next year. I love you.)

yr mate,
Evie
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