Nuts - Melody Cryns

What’s nuts is to be massively late for work, knowing that I must be there promptly at 9am to work on two huge projects that are sitting at my desk right now – short week this week due to Thanksgiving, so everything must get done. I had promised Floyd and Claire I would have some semblance of an outline done tonight, but is it done? No, of course not. That’s because I had to finish reading The Kite Runner, a wonderful book I’d read a couple of years ago, for the class I’m a TA in. I mean, I can’t walk into this class not having read what the rest of the class has read and then some. It was actually a pleasure to go back to reading that book because I was reminded of how much I liked the book. Next week I’m supposed to talk about the book, and I’m still trying to figure out what. There’s a lot to say, that’s for sure…but oh I don’t know. I digress. So I go to start writing creative caffeine, only the sun is shining so brightly through the window that I can’t even see the screen, so I’ve gotta unplug the computer and come out here to the living room to sit down with the laptop on my lap. What prompt could there be for today? Oh it says, “Nuts!” ha! That’s a great one! I think sometimes that I’m nuts! I’m always running here and there, and well…you know what I mean.

But I remember a time when I certifiably thought I was going nuts – like when all four of my kids were young and there were times I really felt as if I was losing it. I’d get this feeling of dread, or I’d open the yellow pages of the phone book to those ‘crisis center pages” and stare at them for a long time. I’d ignore bills that weren’t supposed to be ignored and sometimes I wouldn’t even face what I needed to face having to do with a whole gang of teenagers crammed into a bedroom. It’s so hard to explain…I would grab little Megan and take off for the coffee shop to “escape” from the teenagers. Was I losing my mind? Where had things gone wrong? Why couldn’t we be like a “normal” family? Sometimes I felt as if me and the kids were like a group of people attempting to survive in a stormy, menacing world – in which the sun poured through sometimes, but when it rained, it rained hard and long and the mud was very slippery and we had to be careful not to fall down. Or I pictured us all on a boat at sea, me and the kids, with my mother holding up the rear of the boat. We’d sail around, sometimes into very rough waters and sometimes more calm waters…but my mother slipped and fell off the boat. I tried to throw a lifesaver out to save her and reel her in…cancer riddled her body and she succumbed, my mother, leaving no one to pull up the rear, just me and the kids slipping and hanging on for dear life…so I took the boat with all of us down here to California, back to San Francisco where all of my childhood memories reside…and I can grab them, hold on to them and make them mine.

Okay, call me nuts – but as yet another Thanksigivng approaches and my kids are texting me with remarks such as, “Make sure you get a GIANT turkey Mom!” from Stevie and, “See you soon Mom, Luv you, Jerm xoxoxoxo” and “I’d love to come over for Thanksgiving but I may need a ride back to San Francisco later” from Melissa, and Megan takes out the turkey – this time we are determined to remember to allow the turkey thaw for the right amount of time – that’s when I realize that I wouldn’t have my life any other way. On Thursday, all of my kids and the girlfriends will arrive, and Jerm’s two dogs and a couple of my friends that I’ve invited – and it’ll be fun and crazy and loud…