“We’re late.” My partner was driving too fast in our neighborhood. I pressed my foot into the floor of the passenger side floor mat.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“We’re going to miss half of it,” he said.
We were running late for Ravi’s third birthday party. Our son, also three, had been talking about this party for weeks. Since he is the youngest, he is always being dragged to his older sister’s friends’ events. He finally had a party of his own. …
“How are you?” I’ve just started seeing a therapist and this is always the first question she asks. It’s impossible to answer, so I don’t.
“How much time do you have?” I joke.
“About 45 minutes,” she says.
I want to tell her things she already knows. There’s a pandemic going on. I was furloughed and decided not to return to work to support my children through remote elementary school. My life has shrunk. Every day I imagine I’ve sunk deeper into my floor, a screw twisted a half-turn with each day that passes. But the pandemic is old news…
Danielle Monroe
Writer & Creator/Director of Republic of Camberville, a fiction podcast. Mother. Hustler.
