Temporary? Insanity

I don’t like the fact that it does, but alas, it’s true. From this comes the dizzy-making feeling of the world spinning, oh oh so fast. In those rare moments when I’m able to focus on someone other than myself the spinning slows or perhaps just shifts. It’s nice to have a break every now and again. I’m realizing I need to do that more often.

Not that it’s not fun to walk down the street and think I’m oh so interesting and everyone must be looking at me out of the corner of their eyes and whatnot. To not want to leave the house because social hermitage is so much more comfortable, not having to confront hundreds of other people who all think THEY are the centre of the universe. Silly people. It gives me a headache, honestly.

Today is one of those wanting to stay home days. It’s been snowing since we woke up this morning. Small flakes falling gently and soft but steadily. Not a raging blizzard, just snow. Beauteous, blindingly white, frustrating snow. The car is covered and I peek out the window at it every now and again, picturing myself braving the frigid cold and scraping the ice off the windows while the kids bang on the front door and wail because mummy had the audacity not to take them out until the car was warmed up. Bad mummy.

I picture myself struggling to get my snowsuit clad girls strapped into the carseats that Neil hasn’t gotten around to loosening the straps on yet (note to self – learn how to do that), wincing at the feel of the snowflakes settling on my cheeks and eyelashes. A feeling that many people love but that makes me shudder. It’s like chinese water torture, that slow dropping of freezing wetness onto every exposed piece of flesh. I will likely scold the children for not moving faster, despite the encumbrance of their puffy snowsuits and thick soled boots.

Then I’ll remember whatever is I’ve forgotten and carefully step-step-step my way along the icy patio and back into the house, envying the girls who get to sit in the toasty warm car listening to the acoustic strains of my favourite satellite radio station. Then I will step-step-step my way back, thoroughly bothered by how I seem to keep banging into things, dropping heavy things on my toes, that sort of thing. I will scowl and mutter to myself and then quickly glance up to make sure the neighbours aren’t watching me be all surly and scowly.

It’s all about me, you know.

And I will drive through the dark and the snow, fingers clenching spasmodically at the wheel because I hate driving in the snow and I hate driving in the dark, and I will be doing both at once. And why? What could possible persuade me into such an irrational course of action?

The local Christmas parade.

And my husband’s insistence that our children be there to see it. That I not cower at home and deprive them of the magic of it. He offered to cancel his last patient and rush home to pick them up and rush them back to town for it. And that’s when it hit me. How incredibly important this simple event is to him. And for a moment the world stopped spinning so madly around me. For one brief moment it spun around him.

I think that’s part of what love is. I think that’s what it can do to us. For us. It can stop the spinning long enough for us to realize how dizzy we’re making ourselves. Love can be the feeling of the world revolving around someone else for a time. Not always. Not every moment. Because we’re human after all. But love can teach us that no, the world does not revolve around us, and that this simple fact does not cause it to end.