So What are you Working on?

A seemingly innocuous question asked from one writer to another, on a unseasonably warm day in November. "So, Tiffany, what are you working on?" she asked as our children played paddle board on the beach. My feet comfortably in the sand, reminiscing of summer - almost grateful for global warming. I stumbled on my reply. What am I working on? Keeping my children alive during a global pandemic. Balancing virtual teaching and being a good wife. Juggling countless hours of tele-health appointments for each of the four children entrusted to my care. "This," I half joked, gesturing towards my kids. Because in truth, that is what I'm working on right now. Poems slipping through my hands each day, with no energy left to scribble them down when my oldest finally falls asleep - before my youngest wakes at dawn. And I guess - This - is just a season. One where the poems are my children playing on the beach, or Legos, or screaming through the house threatening each other and then moments later making up. The poems I could be writing, lost in the moments of 6 and 7, 13, and 17. And she nodded. Her own young son trying to keep pace with mine. And I think she meant her nod, her agreement in knowing that there is no balance for a mother and a writer. That -This- is all we can do for now.

My youngest two children, playing - Niantic, CT - November