Distracted

When I sit to write, I’m distracted. 

Right now, Bear (my 100-pound golden shepherd) is lying on the couch with his head in my lap. Thunder is rumbling overhead—God rolling out his trashcan, I thought as a kid. The single-pane glass windows have been foggy for weeks, a thin membrane between the muggy, mosquito-filled swamp of Central Virginia summer and the crisp, 70-degree interior of my home. 

Distractions don’t come when I write—they just are. Days used to drag by, but sometime over the past decade, they’ve sped up and no longer span more than the blink of an eye. 

I remember the first day of fourth grade because it was particularly long, thought it was only a half day, and my mom picked me up at noon and took me to lunch at McDonald’s or Arby’s—some fast food restaurant that seems fancy when you’re ten and trashy when you’re closing in on 30.

Until then, I hadn’t been in a real classroom since I was a kindergartener—far too young to remember what it was like to be a student. Last time I was in school, kids still cried when their parents dropped them off, and my hair was cut into a glossy brown bowl that earned my parents many compliments on their handsome young son. From there, my mom homeschooled me and my brother for several years during my early elementary experience. I returned to school in person for fourth grade at a small Christian school.

My teacher was fresh out of college, no more than 22 or 23, and she knew how to make learning fun. On that first day, we didn’t do much more than learn how her classroom worked—we were to color with crayons or colored pencils, not markers. Markers were for outlining only. We could borrow a pencil from the communal jar, but we had to return it at the end of the day. We’d earn “Winser Bucks” for good behavior and could spend them at the class store on trinkets like decorative pencil erasers and candy. 

On that day, everything was new, and I was acutely aware of each new stimulus—my classmates, the layout of the school, the schedule for the day. The day progressed in slow motion because I was present for each second, fully engaged in what was happening around me. 

Other memories have the same feeling—slow and syrupy sweet—though they are rare. Most of them come from my childhood, when I had the energy to stop and smell the roses. Now, I’m too tired most of the time to notice the passage of time. It’s much easier to let it carry me along. 

What has changed since then? When I was a head shorter than Mom and breaking in my first pair of eyeglasses? When I still wore bangs cut blunt at my eyebrows? When I spent more time with characters in books than people in real life? 

The rain has slowed. It’s now a faint whisper through the front windows. That spot near the porch is flooded again, the mulch washed away and the earth carved out. I hope the basement is dry. 

Dinner is on the stove and needs to be stored in the fridge. Dirty dishes are waiting to be loaded into the dishwasher. Three half-finished knitting projects wait in the basket next to the couch. I should probably go downstairs and work out, maybe ride a few miles on the exercise bike. 

Instead, I write. About nothing and everything. I stop to take notice—to smell the hint of lemon rind on my fingers, though I’ve washed them since I fixed dinner. To taste the buttercream icing on the back of my tongue from the final slice of anniversary cake I ate just a few minutes ago. To see the fog on the windows bubble into condensation and streak down the panes, tears of relief. 

The rain has stopped.

But my words still flow.