inventory

When we last spoke (or—last time before I triumphed over the stack of Postcards to Swing States, that is), my mother had briefly almost failed to recognize me and I had made an arrangement with my doctor to medicate my anxiety as well as adjusting the medication for my blood pressure.

( Then one Thursday evening )

( Then Himself went on a work trip for a week )

( While he was gone )

( MEANWHILE. )

( This past weekend )

AND (a) I mean, look at the world, plus it is (b) concert week—which means three late nights and a full Sunday for me, always a pain in the ass, although we're doing the Brahms Deutsches Requiem, which I love more every time I sing it—and (c) the month of October, which is always uncomfortable for me ever since the time, 12 years ago tomorrow, that my mother told us my father's oncologist said it was probably time for my brother and me to come home. There's no avoiding it: Even in years when I haven't realized where we are in the calendar, the body remembers. Last night I got home from rehearsal and got quietly ready for bed so I wouldn't wake Himself and lay there with my phone screen dimmed trying to wind down by doing the crossword puzzle and reading a few pages of . . . something, I don't even remember what, and I could feel my bite guards clacking together as my TMJ just twitched and spasmed. Making the effort to hold your jaw slightly open so your teeth don't clench is just another kind of tension, of course. I can't win.