Bedroomer.

The last straw has been pulled and to ensure that I do not blur the lines of moral conduct any further, I am taking refuge in my room. Page France croons and drowns out the background screams that refuse to be silenced. Just like an angst-ridden teenager, my music is cranked to its loudest capacity and all I can do is laugh because Page France is as far-reached from threatening as one can possibly stretch. Laugh and sink back against the wall and breathe: in and out, in and out.

I almost burst into tears today in the local grocer in Bassersdorf thanks to a wildly inappropriate tantrum thrown by my pseudo five-year-old adoptee. A woman who was standing behind us in line at the checkout as his screams subsided and flared like the ebb and flow of waves, came up beside me as we bagged our own groceries with downcast eyes and surprised me with an English greeting. I was so shocked at hearing the ever familiar and laidback “Hello there” in such a Swiss German-heavy town that I was speechless. She rubbed her stomach as she continued sorting her vegetables by size and color and explained that she had a baby on the way and was watching us because she was “drawn to family life like a bee to the hive”. When she suddenly grabbed my hand and said, “You handled that well, you will be a good mother someday”, my dam of well-hidden anxiety threatened to pour forth onto the Migros floor where we stood and wash us both away. These are the moments I believe in fallen angels walking among us.

Instead of weeping, I head bobbed and shook her hand with Kroeker severity and we got into a lovely conversation about being employed as an Au Pair in Europe. She had been a nanny in Switzerland as well and was originally from Sweden. I left with the kids feeling a bit better about the way the situation was handled thanks the affirmation of an innocent bystander, but I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that I am doomed as a parent. I used to be such an all-star babysitter. Queen of our own mock BSC, I could play and invent and improvise at the drop of a hat without batting an eyelash at some of the kid’s requests. Unfortunately, with the bloom of my youth fading at a breakneck pace, the reality of bills, loan payments, broken hearts, and being an adult in this age of entitlement have taken their toll on my imagination. The presidential position of the Babysitters Club has long been handed down to budding no named Christian twelve year olds, much more flexible and patient that this mother hen.

On this somber note of reflection, I realized only today that I have made the silent shift from child to adult simply in the way I look back on my childhood years. Role reversal, sort of. Nostalgia is a thing of the past. Lately I have been thinking about the way my parents parented my brother and sister and I. We were pretty damn lucky to have the stability we did as a token nuclear family; we were always dressed, fed, bathed, middle parted, begrudgingly piano lessoned, Sunday schooled, snot free, family gathered and entertained at a consistency worth a gold medal prize (without so much of a nod of acknowledgment or a word of thanks). Thanks mum and dad, you did well. On the other hand, they too were also lucky. We were good kids for the most part (with the exception of our incessant attempts to kill each other while they were away). Mike “babysitting” usually meant Hamburger Helper (moreover, my version of homicide) and being locked outside of the house for hours on end with no shoes in winter. Luckily for my parents, and inevitably for us, we had an ocean of entertainment just outside of our doorway. While growing up in the country has its limitations; it also has its privileges that come with the small town mentality. There was the river, a friend on its own accord, a dam leading to an entirely separate universe, playmates galore on every side of our acreage and beyond, sets of Grandparents five minutes away, Uncles and Aunts two minutes away with a pool and a snack cupboard that could break a man's knees in worship, charge accounts at every business in town, and the comfort in knowing ones kids wouldn’t be snatched from the local grocery store if left to our own devices for the afternoon armed with candy money (pilfered or not).

I spent many hours as a kid alone, memorizing the terrain and flow of the river until I would hear my name being shrieked across six acres of snaking water, bush and fields under the sinking sun. In all my years I never recall feeling confined in any way, shape or form. That is a rarity in this life. Whatever the season, we would rally the troops of the neighborhood and play until we were far too old to be playing. That this was a lifestyle and not luck is truly uncanny in the clarity of hindsight.

To be frank, today was the first day I felt any shreds of homesickness. Three weeks is hardly enough time to take notice in anything, but after returning from a short stint in gaie Paris with my dear friend Luke Marvin over Fashion Week, I have been feeling a hell of a lot. I am not sure I want to get into it on this. Who reads this any how? For whom do I write and why on the internet? I am terrified for my own children. Will diaries even exist when they are in the throes of young love, buck toothed and puberty stricken? I myself tend to scoff at paper and pen when my white keyboard lies in wait for my wild and efficient typing.

I am of sound mind now, the babies are in bed. Band 'The Shivers' woos and tea steeps. In ten days I will be home feeling sorry I ever wanted to leave. BUT seeing as I am still here, alone, it is okay to temporarily wallow in this fleeting despondency. As I told Rabbi only hours before, at the moment the idea of ten or so people sitting around my coffee table smoking cigarettes and wearing French footwear, playing lazy Scrabble, and laughing with necks craned above the din of background carefully selected vinyl sustains me.

Vinyl I miss (just to be a dick to those without): I don't care.

Jana Hunter
Sufjan Stevens
Devendra Banhart
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Band of Horses
Bob Dylan
The Shins
Iron and Wine
The Beatles
Billie Holiday

I am coming home soon and this will just be yet another entry for the scoff-worthy books. Oh, Growth! Blessed be.

Discontent, MK.