I’m So Sucking At This

She fell in Mass today.

I caught her, but she fell.

We were walking up to Communion and she slipped/tripped on an umbrella someone left on the floor of our pew. I saw it just before she got there and didn’t know what to do, and in my moment of indecision she went down. My mind isn’t in this yet. I’m not practiced enough to spot the obstacles and either point them out or move them, and there’s not much time for me to scale this learning curve.

The strength she was enjoying late last week has left her again. I don’t know where it went, but I miss its optimism.

She curled up next to me in church, and lifted her legs onto the pew with her hands so that they could curl beneath her. I leaned my cheek against her hair and let the tears spill down. I wiped them for a while, but it soon became pointless. I’m not sure why I spent time on mascara this morning as it was gone long before the readings were completed.

The small boys jockeyed for space on the other side of me, and the baby climbed relentlessly on and off of my lap. My husband kept glancing my way with this look of intense concern. Public displays of emotion make him uncomfortable, and I’m not very stiff upper lip at the moment…..I kept wanting to say “Stop looking at me in that tone of voice!” But I know it’s not him….it really is me.

On mornings like today, it’s all too much.

I can’t be what they need because I’m so depleted, mostly because this thing we are fighting has no name. There’s great power in being able to name the evil in your midst, and there is a strange kind of comfort there. It’s one we don’t yet have. I have researched and queried until I in longer know what words to search or questions to ask, and still our enemy is unknown…..and even more frightening because if it.

This afternoon a spring storm rolled through. As the thunder boomed the baby ran to me breathless with fear and said “What’s that?”

“It’s just the thunder.” I told her.

She breathed out a contented sigh and said “Oh. Thunder. Yes,” and was at peace. The next time it crashed, she startled and looked around for me. “Thunder.” She said reverently, still jumpy but without the same anxiety. It had a name, and that made it better somehow.

That’s all I want right now. I want to look at the shaky legs and my daughter’s weakness and be able to say in hushed tones “It’s only…….” I want to call it by its name and take the fearful mystery out of it. I need to name it so that I can turn that energy onto more important things.