Weather

by Jenny Offill

Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters? Old person worry: What if everything I do does?

A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person. He was just a kid, so I let it go. And now, years later, I probably only think of it, I don’t know, once or twice a day.

“I keep having this thought, Lizzie.” “What thought?” “What if I sold my soul to the devil when I was a kid?” “You didn’t sell your soul to the devil.” “What if I did but I don’t remember it?” “You didn’t sell your soul to the devil.” “But what if I did?” “Okay, but think, Henry, what did you get for it?”

Without challenge, they counseled, life had no meaning. So after a few decades, their custom was to advise that the entire village be moved to another place. All of them went to a different part of the Shuswap territory and by starting over life regained its meaning. There were new streams to figure out, new game trails to learn. Everyone felt rejuvenated.

He asks me what my favored platforms are. I explain that I don’t use any of them because they make me feel too squirrelly. Or not exactly squirrelly, more like a rat who can’t stop pushing a lever. Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage! Please, please, my pretty!

“The only thing we are demonstrably better at than other animals is sweating and throwing,” she says.

The moment you tell Catherine about a problem she begins to act and she does not stop acting until the problem is solved. For this reason, my brother sometimes lets a problem go on for some time before telling her about it in order to prepare himself for the intensity of her mobilization.

And his immobilization

When electricity was first introduced to homes, there were letters to the newspapers about how it would undermine family togetherness. Now there would be no need to gather around a shared hearth, people fretted. In 1903, a famous psychologist worried that young people would lose their connection to dusk and its contemplative moments.

It is possible they are having a fight, but it is so quietly done that I can’t be sure of it.

She made me a fancy dinner—rack of lamb, mint jelly, chocolate soufflé—and I tried to act like a human being, not like someone on the lam from her kid.

He lets everything go to hell all day, then does a mad rush to get everything together before Catherine gets home at seven. I’ve been treading lightly, but he seems worse, not better. Luckily, Iris is an easy baby. It’s Henry who seems ready to burst into tears.

He’s not doing well with this sleep deprivation. There’s a reason it’s used as a tool of torture. But still, everyone I know is trying to sleep less. Insomnia as a badge of honor. Proof that you are paying attention.

He says you never know which kids will do well. But in general the suburban kids do the worst. They have no predators, he says.

Ben is used to my all talk, no action ways, but it took a long time to bank all that goodwill.

And then it is another day and another and another, but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time.