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Symptoms of Disappearing
Content warning: this essay contains discussion of passive suicidal ideation.
It started out as a joke. Or at least I thought it was a joke.
Last summer, my book club read The Hours. This group of Hudson Valley mothers and parents discussed how we were struck by Michael Cunningham’s sensitivity to the plight of new mothers. “Sometimes we all want to run away to a hotel room with a book,” we all agreed.
When lockdown began to drag on through March and into April, then May, I found myself chasing solitude in a similar sort of way. Our book club had moved on to Grady Hendrix by then. I tried to find time for The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I brought my book into the bath tub, my bedroom. Each time my six-year-old daughter would interrupt me after a minute or two, bursting through a closed door with a request for a snack or for help finding the remote control. Her father was there, working on his computer. It didn’t matter. We were meeting over zoom to talk about the book the next day, and I hadn’t managed to steal away any reading time at all. Stolen. This time was stolen, from more important things. From my work, my family. Finally I took a mason jar mojito out to our hammock, and managed to read for about forty minutes, as the sun went down. It felt luxurious. My daughter…
