I stood in the kitchen holding a school shirt and felt the whole week in the fabric

Dear Delyara, It was still slightly damp at the collar because I had taken it off the airer too early, hoping it would be dry enough by morning if I left it on the chair near the radiator. I stood there with one hand inside the shirt, checking the sleeves, already thinking three steps ahead. Breakfast. Packed lunch. The message I still had to answer. The petrol light. The fact that my son has been quieter all week and I don’t know if it’s school, tiredness, hormones, or something he still doesn’t want to say. That is what motherhood feels like for me lately. No single task arrives alone. Every small thing is attached to five other things, and all of them seem to end up in my hands eventually. I put the shirt down, checked the weather, then checked it again as if rain itself might become one more thing I’d need to emotionally manage before 7 a.m. Sometimes I think I am less a person now and more a hallway through which everyone’s tomorrow keeps walking.