Life continues and continues, no matter what its losses are. It reshapes you. Taking care of children makes you into a cyborg. Your body becomes a coatrack for other bodies. It becomes a trolley, a racecar and a street sweeper. Also it becomes a mobile storeroom, a walking lifeguard station, a fire lookout tower, a walking stick, an echo chamber for other people’s voices, a portable escalator and bridge for crossing obstacles, an affect mop-up kit for emotional meltdowns, a documentary film crew on call, a nature education center, a route planner for dependent creatures, a jukebox, a lost & found, a food truck, a crossing guard, a multilingual interpreter, a treasury and occasionally a guardian angel.
It’s a curious feeling, to feel like you have become infrastructure for other people’s lives. Sometimes it’s great fun. Other times you think, “I just spent the entire day being infrastructure and it feels a little lonely.”