TANTON QUARANTINO FULL

TANTON QUARANTINO FULL

I could write endlessly about the things I miss, but the present reality is blessed and full all the same. The hopefulness I felt about Election 2020 and which I hope I might feel again depending on whom Biden taps as a running mate (?). The sweaty barista at the Arlington Starbucks. This semester started out difficult and it persists in being really difficult but I miss the living, breathing, electric classroom experience.

My students and their three-dimensional human forms and colorful ideas and incisive questions. Not that I got one very often, but merely the possibility of paying a stranger to kneed my back like a stubborn slab of bread dough is a huge luxury I took for granted. They were little totems in my week, little flags in the sand of where I staked my territory of being a human with singular interests and joys, and not merely a mom in servitude of others. I miss going to night class and buying myself a coffee just because. It is interrupted by moments of having to do administrative things or clean the bathroom floor or walking through the cemetery. There is just caretaking: for my children, my students, and my dog (who has regressed to new levels of diva infantilism). Each and every day feels a bit like parenting babies where there is no weekend and no real guarded sanctuary of rest.

I think 65% of my grumpiness is knowing it will soon be warm and I will not be queueing with all my neighbors and their dogs in wait of a Reese’s Razzle in a waxy cup with a tall white spoon.Ĭlear breaks from caretaking.

Tanton quarantino