Chaos

My world is currently a great cacophony of cosmic chaos…

My daughter is staring up the cliff of puberty. I have stepped over the cusp of menopause, and my mother has started down the cliff of dementia/ Alzheimer’s.

I feel like the rope holder - of which I’m sure there is some official term. On one arm my daughter is crying because the book bag … which she has thrown all over the ground all year, and is stuffed to the gills so it barely zips .. yes, she is crying that her book bag is suddenly going to be irreparably soiled by leftover rock grit in the trunk of the car.

While I’m looking down at her from the crazy cusp of menopause, I briefly and maniacally contemplate dragging her tearful mess swiftly up that puberty cliff; skinning her knees and messing up her hair. Then … my anchor… my rock… my own mother is in the throes of pulling me, equally as swiftly mind you, down the other side with her own exasperated forgetfulness and vision loss.

I’m gritting my teeth, groaning under the weight… yelling at my daughter to stop crying, while my mother starts crying, and then I’m crying. All of this I’m doing while simultaneously pushing my daughter and towing my mother and begging God - “help me not to lose them both!”

And on queue, the great angel guardian of the heavenly jukebox slides in a quarter and presses F-13. An organ, a piano, and saintly voices fade in from the recesses of time “…in every high and stormy gale; my anchor holds within the veil. On Christ the solid rock I stand..”

Queue now the puddle of blubbering tears as I hug my daughter, and guide my mother up here on chaos cliff, as we sing… “On Christ… the solid rock… I stand.”