dust in the air

I descend the stairs into another new day and find the boys at the counter, a cereal bowl assembly line. I pour myself a cup of coffee, the spine of the morning, and babysit the toast because what else is there to do? I mean, besides trying to keep up with all the housework and helping the boys with science experiments slash hoping they don't blow up the back fence. Plus feeding them all day long.

While I bounce between binge-watching the what-ifs in my own head and doom scrolling headlines for each new terror, the boys vacillate between intense wrestling and civic urgency and screen time trance and timber forts. We talk about discrimination and atmospheric instability and covid and all the other horrible things - like dust in the air, invisible even if you're choking on them. And I know these ideas roll around in their brains because occasionally questions emerge, particularly when we're doing something else, like cloud-gazing or creeking.
How much danger is there? 
Does everyone have white skin underneath? 
Why doesn't everyone wear a mask? 
What can we do to make black people feel safe? 
But their minds always come back to what's present and graspable, like what I have fixed them for lunch and Do we have anything for dessert? 

All the hiking and cooking, all the deep conversations and frivolous activity, and still plenty of time to try to figure out how my self-worth interacts with doing nothing.
I sink into the lawn chair with a sprinkler view and reach for the next best thought, remember that happiness is homemade. I need a “one day at a time” perspective not because things change very quickly but because sometimes they don't seem to change at all.