Megan Vos | Smoldering

Smoldering

By Megan Vos

JULY AND AUGUST 2020

We return from a fve-week road trip to our home in Boulder. The weeds in our front yard are taller than my daughters, and the grass is charred from record-breaking heat.

The color of the sky defes description. The air is thick. I cough. Do I have COVID? I wonder, as I have frequently over the past fve months. “Does your throat hurt?” I ask my husband. “It’s the smoke,” he says. I hope he is right. Inside, the air is stale, but not smoky. I fall into bed, grateful to be home, but missing my parents, whom we just left. I don’t know when we will see them again. I worry about the fres burning in the mountains. I do not know then that the hottest August on record awaits us.

SEPTEMBER 2020

On the frst day of remote learning, my daughters dress up and we take pictures on the front step like we do every year. Then we go inside and they log on and I cry. We are all miserable. Each day is a tinderbox on the verge of ignition. My kindergartner fgures out that she can close the computer if she is tired of “school,” and after fve minutes most days, she decides she’s done. My third grader is miserable, but when I suggest a break, she’s too stressed about missing something to be able to step away. She sits rooted to her chair, scowling at me each time I pass. My burnout from constant negotiating is oppressive. I channel my frustration into writing letters to voters in battleground states, urging them to vote in the presidential election.

OCTOBER 2020

We are remodeling our bathrooms. We might as well, we thought over the summer, when we scheduled our construction for fall. Our kids would

be remote for school, and we could go to the mountains and stay in our friends’ condo. Then, our district announces that kindergartners through second graders will return, and a month later, third through ffth graders.

My husband goes to the mountains with our pets, and I take our daughters to a hotel since our bathroom demo will start the day third grade returns to school. The hotel is off the highway, one exit from our home. In my mind, I see us splashing in the pool after school, see myself relaxing and watching Netfix in a hotel room with a view of the mountains while I have my frst break from parenting since the beginning of the pandemic.

But our room overlooks the highway, and all we can see is the rise of the road and an offce park across the parking lot. Road noise penetrates the walls. The pool is closed indefnitely. On my third grader’s frst day of inperson school since the previous March, I take her picture on the scratchy couch in our hotel room, a generic painting of a bicycle hovering behind her head. We drive down the hill into Boulder. It’s too smoky to see the typical mountain view, a panorama that amazes me even after living here for sixteen years. Usually, the fres have stopped by October, but this year, they continue to ravage the west. Three of the ten most destructive wildfres in Colorado history happen in 2020, and in the states further west it’s even worse. I forgo the hike I was planning and climb into my bed in the sterile hotel room. Netfix doesn’t feel as appealing when it’s my only option. I write more election letters.

My Google search history: Do masks protect from wildfre smoke inhalation? Boulder County COVID data Record temperature Boulder October 2020 election polls Vaccine development Average time to complete bathroom remodel

NOVEMBER 2020

This feels like the apocalypse, I text my husband. Our construction is delayed. COVID cases are rising. There’s no way our kids will remain inperson for school through the end of 2020. The mountains continue to burn; ash rains from the sky and leaves white fecks on the pavement of the hotel parking lot. I worry about the fres and COVID and the election. Every night, I fall asleep between my girls in the hotel king-sized bed. I close the cheap blinds to shut out the parking lot lights, but the light

pierces through the edges, illuminating the girls’ peaceful expressions, which anchor me as I toss and turn.

We play at the school playground one afternoon. A friend brings coffee, and we sit six feet apart, masks down, while our kids play. A small plume of smoke unfurls from a ridge beyond Boulder. I sip my latte and brace for everything I don’t know is coming.

During non-pandemic times, MEGAN VOS produces Listen to Your Mother, a live show featuring local writers’ stories about motherhood. Now, she has shamelessly embraced Peloton spin classes and bread baking, and fnds solace hiking in the mountains above her Boulder, CO home. Megan loves to ski with her family and try new recipes with her partner. Her writing has been published in the Birth Stories and Radical Mama editions of Motherscope and in The Kindred Voice. You can read more of Megan’s writing on her (now rarely updated because: pandemic) blog, www.familygrowsup.com.

Engage with Megan’s Story:

Create a summary of your year by writing one moment from each month in chronological order. Try to identify a theme or growth that occured in this twelve-month span.