For the folks out there thinking that all is lost, that America has
reached the end of the line, and that secession should no longer be thought of
as a dirty word, I’d like to relate a little incident that happened to me a few days ago. It may not change your mind
about the imminent demise of the republic, but you might feel like at least it doesn’t
have to happen today.
So it’s Thursday, and Thursdays are my favorite day. After dropping Jessica off at school, I drive
Maria out to my mom and dad’s house, and they watch her while I come home and
write, alone, uninterrupted, for five or six hours in a row. Alone. Uninterrupted. In a row.
It’s the closest thing to a realization of my dream working life I’ve got. It hasn’t actually gone that way the last
three weeks or so, but today was going to be different. I could feel it.
We had already taken daughter number one to school and were
driving west on Cactus Road, following the usual route for getting daughter
number two to Grandma and Grandpa’s place in Sun City. We are stopped by the light at 51st Ave
and wait there, first in line when the light turns green. Maria is in her car seat in the back,
pestering me to imitate Toby, the snobby, spectacle-wearing, robot-obsessed villain
from the PBS show WordGirl. Toby is her latest crush (I believe I’ve
mentioned before about her unsettling tendency to crush on bad guys), and I’ve
managed to work up a passable impersonation of the nerdy lad’s voice. Plus I already have the glasses. She likes my Toby so much that she is
constantly after me to be him. This time I
try to put her off by professing my love for the song on the radio, singing
really loudly along with it, effectively drowning out her pleas. While I’m singing, I’m also thinking about what
I’m going to do with my writing time once I get back home. I can
do these two things simultaneously, unlike trying to think and channel Toby,
which is mainly why I’m putting her off.