Howling Under A Smooth Surface

I wanted to feel all the parts of myself alive and awake inside myself, and still, somehow, survive

The thing I miss most about those years I spent living in the country is the very thing I eventually came to hate about it: the long snake of black tar between one place and another, the empty distances, the endless driving. ¹

God, how I miss the driving.

I miss going for days and days without leaving the house in winter—alone with little babies, creaky floors, nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing in my brain but static and oatmeal. Nothing in my view but four walls, big window, bare branches, frozen lake.

I miss stuffing babies into snowsuits and snowsuits into car seats, clicking them in, and going, going, nowhere, for hours. Sleeping children, warm car, barren county roads. I can’t remember anymore the times it didn’t work. The times the boy screamed instead of slept, the times my spirited girl, that untamed horse, pulled his hair or bit him. The afternoon we skidded on black ice right into the ditch as a storm kicked up on during the last hours of December. I don’t care about those t…