We walked to the nursery for more seeds but the store was closed until further notice.

I made bread with the child but the yeast was dead so we made flatbreads.

John said we’d move to Australia if everything broke down, and for once I was too tired to care.

—
On a night we’d agreed to fuck, John stayed up late talking with Victoria on the phone. He was on the sofa in the living room and his face was pink, his expression the grateful disbelief of a teenaged virgin. He was so animated, he sounded like he was on coke.

After he finally hung up, I lectured him about what I perceived as his flagrant emotional affair with Victoria. We agreed to set Thursday aside as date night in perpetuity.

—
John went for a run and then proposed a fast, reeking fuck. He hadn’t been wearing deodorant.

In the morning, the child got out of bed in tears. Mom, you’re usually good at knowing why I’m crying. But I don’t know why I’m crying now. I told him it was because his body was wise, and that it missed going to school.

Then he gave me a hug and said, This experience is really weird. What a soul.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch maintaining semi-attentive availability, waiting to be summoned by the child. The only artifact of this work was the child himself, who would accumulate the results of my work in the form of a gradual intellectual and moral evolution. I would accumulate my part of it by looking older and more tired.

—
John casually said he was going to go for a bike ride even though we’d planned to do yoga together, and I erupted. John was furious that I was hurt and thought I should apologize for being angry. It’s not my fault, he said, and I neatly finished, It never is.

When I asked John to check my busted gearshift, he said, Move. Then he shoved me out of the way. Instead of getting mad I said, Next time, please just say “excuse me.” The child noticed that I was glum and quietly said ILMF to me, which was our secret word that meant I love my family.

I decided that I just wouldn’t be hurt when John tried to hurt me. I wouldn’t react. It was already starting to work.

Marni wrote, This isn’t exactly my life dream and I wrote back, We’re too old for dreams. Life at our age was about nurturing young, serving community, and, for the very lucky, some battered, wiser form of love, not a dream of love.