Homemaking

I must be grouchy, because everything I consider writing lately has a tinge of grouch to it. A decrying of the reciprocal losses of faces and books that seem to follow the rise of Facebook. A dirge for realism. What cheers me, apart from reading David Grossman's To the End of the Land--by no means cheerful, but isn't it the powerfully grim novel that perversely offers most comfort, a sense, perhaps, of recognition, of knowing?--and fretting over the semi-literate, but who cares, Tim Riggins, is browsing online at things I'd like to buy. Then, this depresses me further, makes me feel nothing exceeds my irritation more than my vapidity. Then I scold myself: don't be a prig, we all like pretty things. Etc, etc.

Homemaking. So seductive, so sickening. My mother recently recovered from an intense E-Bay addiction. Her particular affliction? Plates. Oh, my. Plates. Beautiful ones. And so many. We all laughed, and felt a little nervous, as the contents of her cabinets seemed to multiply between every visit. Beautiful things are a refuge. And for women, maybe also a trap. We are in a cultural moment obsessed with the handmade, the homemade, and by extension, with homemaking. With time dedicated to the home a near religious rite.

I do not in any way want this space to become a dream diary--yuck! But in the last week I've had the same dream, almost, twice, and can't stop thinking about it. I am trying to get home, to my apartment, and it's nearly impossible. In the first dream, the entrance is a delicate wooden-spoked ladder of sorts, and the spokes keep breaking off. In the second, there's a kind of playground plastic tunnel entrance one has to crawl through. I do spend a lot of time in playgrounds these days, but it's by no means a merry crawling in the dream. It's an exasperated, slightly worried, good grief, why is going home so hard?

So here's the idea: It's about a woman, a young mother, who moves with her young daughter, a toddler, into the playground, their neighborhood playground. It is summer, and in the plastic tunnel they make a bed for themselves with sleeping bags, which they tidy away before normal playground hours. They are known to other mothers and other children, have chatted casually by the swings over many months, or in a mommy-baby yoga class, or music class nearby, and at first, it seems to these other mothers just almost as if the two of them are always there. "Here you are again!" the other mothers say, a mask of friendliness not quite obscuring their worry. Could they really have moved here? And why? And what has happened to their home, which had seemed, just weeks ago, so certain, so clear?