Somehow, January manages to still keep going. It’s been a strange month already to be sure, full of fire and loss and uncertainty. But I am reminded that January always feels like many lifetimes, even when nothing particular happens. And that a New Year is about as consequential as a bookmark; it’s only useful to you if you keep moving it to the next inflection point.
When my son is having “big feelings” (as four year olds often do), one way he allows me to help him regulate, to help him come back to himself, is we sit in a blanket tent. It’s just his old baby blanket pulled over our heads so that from an outside view we look like a two-headed ghost sitting on the living room couch, but there is something about the filtered light, the close air inside the soft chenille cocoon, that make emotions feel more manageable. We have been spending a lot of time inside our blanket fort, giggling before bed time, reading, making shadow puppets. It is the safest place I can think of.
There is no space for the glow of my phone screen in the blanket fort. There is no room for the noise of the news, for the press of all the gathering items on my to-do list. It’s a flimsy and temporary structure, and will collapse as soon as we cease to hold it up, but that’s ok. You don’t live your whole life in the blanket fort. You hold it over your head until the feeling passes, and then, if you’re my son, you tie it around your shoulders like a super hero’s cape, or drag it along the ground like trusted side kick, or use it to gently cover Jimmy, your favorite cat, who is peacefully sleeping on the back of the couch. You always know you can throw it over your head again later, if you need to.