“Smack it,” Emma tells Evelyn, pointing at a spider crawling a little too close to their dollhouse.
“Emma,” Evelyn replies, suddenly stern, as if she’s slipped into a parental role. “We do not kill live creatures around here. You may not.”
She’s right, you know. We don’t.
Although, I’ve reconsidered—ever since I saw a video of a woman whose spider bite turned the skin around her knee black. It spread like an oil slick. She said it wasn’t a brown recluse or black widow. Just a regular old house spider. The kind she used to let live among her.
Out the front window, across the road, the cows roam—heads down, tails swatting flies, a white bird perched calmly on one of their backs. It struck me as such a silly, lovely sight. An odd little duo, like Siskel and Ebert, if one of them were a cow.
You guys, I’m feeling a bit sullen. Hearing, “Ms. Jaclynn, there is a ton of rabbit poop on that blanket,” right after I pulled it from the dryer—and then discovering a large damp spot of pee—I knew I couldn’t win.
I could list more reasons—there are always reasons—but I’m trying to pull the reins back on that impulse. We’re so quick to explain our emotions. To justify why we feel off, or low, or irritable. And sure, self-awareness matters. It helps. But what if our feelings are allowed to shift without an explanation? What if they don’t always make sense—and that’s okay?
It’s a kind of soft refusal, I think. A quiet backing away. Maybe it’s work-related. Maybe it’s the way I hover in a constant state of curiosity—always trying to understand and clarify, trying to microscope my way into insight, like I’ll finally solve the puzzle if I just squint hard enough.
But maybe there’s no single cause. No smoking gun. Maybe it’s just the slow accumulation of a million tiny things—and nothing at all.
Evelyn’s chosen “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” for tonight’s movie. Time to turn into a potato on the couch.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 