Notes from Home: the Theoretical and the Real

It’s a bright, cheery day, a brief respite before another long moment of rain promised for tomorrow. I’m trying to match the level of my cheerfulness to the cloudless pale sky, but it’s not going well because I’m still shoving one last kid through some finals. Dear Sweet Baby Jesus, she has to pull her life together so that I can get on with mine.

The thing is, when something as monumental as a child sitting down directing her mind in a single direction to remember anything she has learned is going on, I can’t really do anything but stand on the other side of the room and just freak out.

Theoretically I could, of course. That is the great single divide line in this mortal life. There is what is theoretically possible, and then there is what actually happens. I say this over to myself a lot especially when I am thinking about Other People. She, whoever she is, could forgive that person and repair that relationship. It’s within the realm of possibility. It is something that Could be done if you took all the choices and strung them out and looked at them honestly. But in reality, as things work themselves out in time and space with all the vagaries and hidden places of the heart, she won’t do it. She might even feel that she can’t, even though someone standing outside might feel that she can. And so, it is useless to keep going over to that thing that you think she could do, because she’s not going to do it, and so you might as well take it away and deal with, what’s that called? Oh yes, of course, Reality.

So even though I could have done some laundry and kept up with the kitchen and written some notes and read some books and done some things, the fact of the matter is that I didn’t. I couldn’t, somehow, compel myself to do anything more than stand around in the background freaking out. The two great tasks of Finals and Keeping House were not able to reside together in my own being.

What I’m trying to say is, my house is a wreck. And it’s going to keep on being a wreck until she’s done. And then, after that, when everything is turned in, then And Only Then, will I really clean it. In the meantime I am shouting at the rest of the children pick up and do dishes and fold laundry, but that never goes as well as I think it should either. Truly, the divide between the theoretical and the real is everywhere profound.

I have been really enjoying this website I found, which I imagine everyone else in the world knew about but me, called Arts & Letters Daily. I had no idea. It’s so nice. It’s so much nicer than reading about the news of the day. So far I’ve read something about Evelyn Waugh, and the death of the personal Essay, and something about the Benedict Option, and something about Shakespeare. What’s so nice is reading About all these people without actually having to read them, which I could not possible muster the wherewithal to do right now. See above about not being able to do anything of substance or import right now.

Anyway, this moment shall soon be over one way or another. Either she will get everything in or she won’t. But the deadline will pass and we will all pick up the pieces of our usual life and try to put them back together. But by then it will be raining again. Won’t that be nice.

Have a lovely day!