APRIL IS THE STUPIDEST MONTH

And other lesser-known first drafts

One of the more famous lines in all of poem-dom, “April is the cruellest month,” was actually “April is the stupidest month” in its earliest draft.*

*This is not true.

When TS Eliot looked out upon the wreckage of his house, wrought by his twin toddlers, he had the seminal notion to call his poetic tome-in-progress “The Waste Land.” Shortly thereafter, the children dug up the tulips they had all just planted together (the dirt was still loose and glistening), and from the image of this great undoing, and the question of whether the topsy-turvied bulbs could grow in a scant centimeter of remaining, abandoned soil, he was able to conjure the title for Section One, which has ever after been “The Burial of the Dead.”*

*This is not true. The section is called that, though.

The unsettled, brooding/breeding quality of the famous opening lines, fomented by no less than quintuple use of gerund-precedes-vertiginous-enjambment, were modeled loosely after the exhaustion and despair of the constant-ness of childrearing.*

*This is not true. But the stuff about the line structure could pass for accurate to my poet friends if they were four bourbons in. No, wait: they’d need to be stone cold sober, bored, and ready for dinner. Bourbon tends to make poets keener because we’re all already depressed, so there’s nowhere to go from there but sharper. Beware the sad and accurate mind.

I went for a 17-mile run today. It was long, which is all I have to say about that. Except: I finished the final climb of about 600 feet, which felt either like digging myself out of or into a grave, or both, and at the crest of the dusty, windy hill where for some reason we made our home, I checked my fitness app (53rd mistake of the day). It stared at me with the number 15. Not 17.*

*This is true. I wish it weren’t. I’d forgotten to add the 2-mile spur in the middle. Dear reader, I was hoping the thing would say 456, or at least 23. This is why hope is a bad idea.

I wrote a poem draft last week for the first time since the 70s.*

*I wasn’t yet born in the 70s. That’s how dire I feel about my “lack of time” for writing. But if we’re going to be super real here, I didn’t write much more when I had time: I may have written less. Time isn’t usually the problem. It’s psychic space. And I’m gifted at giving things that don’t deserve space in my consciousness several acres to roam and a rich diet of hay and grain.

It felt great to start a poem and the thing is not yet any good.*

*Truth or dare? Truly, dear self, I haven’t the energy for either. And yet here we are. Notice, however, that I inserted the word “yet,” which is a hard-won practice forged by the flogging end of the fourth decade of life.

My children are exceedingly confused about seasons at the moment. “It is summer now!” they yell, when it hits 43 degrees, and run outside naked. They come in crying, betrayed.*

*There is absolutely no need for any explanation or verification here. We must learn to let facts and images do their work. Perceive more, meddle less, maybe even craft and sculpt less. Except in the case of choosing to omit— that’s always a good practice. Oh, except if you find you’re omitting everything, and your soul is dwindling down to a daily Twitter session followed by Netflix, crying, and insomnia. Then you need to find a way to restore the *inclusion* of material, the speaking of your need for speaking, as one might reintroduce carbohydrates, judiciously, to heal the soul, because they ARE NOT BAD. THAT IS A LIE PERPETUATED BY THE 1990S.

It took me seven hours to assemble a bunk bed for my children with a hex key, which looks like a bent metal toothpick, and my husband later informed me it all could have been done with a hex attachment for the impact driver. Anyway now the kids sleep beautifully.*

*First part: true. Second part: false.

When I think about war, I mean, the World War whose horror, destruction, discombobulation, derangement, pressurization, and distortion changed human life forever, all of which TS Eliot was combing through in the pitch-perfect, surgical, grandiose, stunning, ruinously accurate lines of “The Waste Land,” I am duly put in my place over here as I whine about my elective and largely joyous exercise practice.*

*Understanding the comparative manageability of my own struggles doesn’t mean I have to disregard them. Rather, I think, perceiving and acknowledging the pain of the greater world could actually make me more capable of compassion in the kitchen, say, or a cocktail party (do people still do those?), or in my tulip bed and my kids’ bunkbed, since healing on the galactic level is not within my power. BUT THIS IS:

I can be kind to myself, to my family, and to my friends.*

True, much of the time. It’s harder than it ought to be, and takes work. Why, April, does everything take so much work? Especially the things that matter most?

I can tell the truth.*

True, much of the time.

When I can’t quite find the truth, and it’s really bugging me, I can speak anyway. Then, as though my words were a garden, I can survey what I’ve planted and planned versus what’s appeared and volunteered; I can decide what needs pulling, what might grow for a while and fail and what might surprise me in some other sprawling, curling, ridiculously hearty and unaided way. I can snack on some of the tender shoots and accidentally step on the others.

I can get to work within the giant muddy mess of April, stupid old April, knowing full well it will never be pretty, and it will often be hard. Returning to life in the spring, in short, sucks. But I’ll say this, at least: it’s true.

Yesterday we, and by “we” I mean “I,” assembled a bunk bed. It took almost exactly six hours. Among the factors that contributed to the length and breadth of the project:

—One child who adores small parts, has pockets, and wishes to disburse her resources and share with the world

—One child who adores “building,” and began hauling the longest, heaviest, most dangerous parts (labeled 18 and 21) around the living room and stacking them, repeating “this is the chassis, this is the chassis”

—A break for sadness about the results of a choice to open the refrigerator, take out two tomatoes, transport them to the play room, and squeeze them with great force

—A break to go to the store for more food because we were down to