The weather has been sharp with spring chill, with a couple of unseasonably stifling days thrown in to keep us off-balance. Sunday was close and humid, and Sunday night impossible to sleep; no movement in the air, heavy thunder in the distance. Despite the nice day, I got zero bulbs planted and did nothing in the yard. I lounged in a chair and watched Snoop’s red curls bounce in the sunshine under her little hat.
Such lethargy makes me feel guilty and unproductive. I should be spring cleaning, doing laundry, knitting, exercising, baking, or working on one of ‘longer term project’ tasks on my work to-do list. But the explosions of growth and life around me in the springtime have the effect of annually rendering me listless and unmotivated.
With the end of the official birdwatching season, the backyard is suddenly thronged with bird traffic and the early mornings are full of silvery birdsong. It’s hypnotic to sit by the window and watch their comings and goings. Snoop & I linger in the garage during our morning bustle to load the car and depart for our busy days; we like listening to the birds and she puts her little fingers up to her mouth in a parody of a bird beak and whispers, ‘Tweet Tweet Tweet, Mommy. The birdies say Tweet Tweet Tweet.’
After dropping Snoop off at preschool, I listen to Jonathon Franzen’s ‘Freedom’ on audiobook during my commutes and every day I am more blown away by it. I find myself preoccupied at work, wanting to check in with the Berglunds, and then remember with a start that it is fiction. It starts out cleanly, as one thing; one set of impressions of a successful and enviable family. Then the floor story drops away into a complicated maze of motivations, history, emotional baggage, sacrifices and longings, missteps and bad judgements. Concepts and ramifications of freedom of choice, both personal and more grand in scale. The deep flaws and self-absorption of the characters, loveable and pathetic, sympathetic and grotesque, his razor insight into their motivations, understandable and unforgivable, they all seem to be saying as the story unfolds, ‘don’t give yourself too much rope to hang with.’
How much of our own misery is self-inflicted?
I need more time on pause to digest the history of the rare, endangered, and miserable Cerulean Warbler.
