Spin

Growing up I felt as though my parents were always distracted. They were in a spin, their heads a-whirl. Their days exhausted them, and they were rarely present. It's a horrible way to live, I know all about it, my thoughts, my worries, spinning around in my head like a tornado. Sadly I often see my friends in spin, and I hope their kids won't grow up feeling that they, too, were raised by tornadoes. Can we embrace this journey, and try not to spin through all of it? Sometimes spin descends on me for weeks, and it's torture. I just try to hang in there, poking my arms out through the swirling 110-mile-per-hour winds to grab my notebook, my saxophone, my laundry basket, promising myself this too shall pass. I try to laugh at myself, try to remember that the present is a present.