seconds: note two: play portal

I have a sore wrist. I sorted buttons from a tin I have had around for a year, sitting on two yoga cushions in my bedroom, the tin.  It is an old yellow and red slightly dented cylinder advertising a cracker company. I had my doubts about button sorting. I dismissed the activity several times, but the invitation persisted. I can sense that I had to sort those buttons to continue playing the vast puzzle of my life. These buttons now sit divided into four sets. I touched every one of probably a thousand old bits that haven’t been touched in years. 40 years easily, I imagine. That takes me back to a time when I was in elementary school.

The transition from school to home was difficult. I don’t know why. But a habit developed that I sat in a chair in the corner of the kitchen in the afternoon and talked to my mother. There may have been an accounting of my day: perhaps a litany of school complaints.

The main idea as I have come to see it was my request for help with what was going to happen next. I had to go through some portal. Her words and my words created a spell, rather than solved a problem.

I wanted help deciding what I would like to do, though in retrospect I didn’t really.

I might have been waiting for her to reveal some secret of our past that would make everything make sense, or perhaps I was waiting for her to reveal some magic ability that would banish doubt and anxiety.

I didn’t think the things my mother proposed were what I wanted to do, but...

Eventually I would get off the chair and go off to play until dinner. At that time I had my own room and a closet with toys. Sometimes I rearranged the closet.