“What day is it?” My wife Katie asks me.
I think for a moment.
“Is it Friday?”
“It’s Saturday,” my son Samson shouts from the other room.
“Oh,” either Katie or I say. “Thank you.”
Friday blurs with Saturday. December blurs with January. 2024 blurs with 2025. The liminal space of Winter Break continues.
***
AI, by way of Google, tells me this about liminal spaces:
AI, by way Google, provides me with this collection of images of liminal spaces:
The world liminal comes from the Latin word limen which means threshold. So I guess I’m suggesting that I’m at a threshold right now. Sitting in the space between the fall of 2024 and the spring of 2025. The sky is gray. It’s a sweltering winter in Iowa City. 40 degrees and climbing. Our children have a sixteen-day long winter break. Sixteen days. Let me emphasize that number. SIXTEEN days.
Our house doesn’t feel big enough. I have a home office in the basement. Typically, the basement is a quiet retreat where your humble, attractive, and introverted author can find respite from the wildness of the world. Light a candle, crack a window, and fire up a video game or six to escape for a little while. Or a long while. Such a space is, sadly, gone.
My sons Solomon and Samson have turned my office into their second bedrooms. We drag the mattress off the futon, make the bed with all their stuffed animals, and they have sleepovers each night. They stay up late and screech with laughter at the promise of not having to wake up early for school. They spend their afternoons howling at each other as they roll around on the enormous yoga ball they got for Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against their vital expressions of joy and play, especially as a contrast with the deadening weight of screen time. Still, my quiet basement office has become a cluttered playroom.
My blood pressure medication shakes hands with my anti-anxiety pills. They work overtime to keep me calm amidst the chaos and clutter of this present age. I sit in this liminal space, preparing to cross the threshold into whatever is next.
***
We’re always crossing thresholds. There’s always something next. Say what you want about being alive, nothing is fixed or frozen, despite our attempts to contain the chaos that comes with existing as living and breathing beings moving through infinite time and endless space. Talk about a wild couple of sentences. This is the kind of writing that could show up in a freshman’s intro-to-philosophy-paper. It is the kind of thing you might think or say if you are sixteen and staying up until two-in-the-morning getting drunk or high with your friends. And here I am, sober as all get out, forty-four-and-counting, and writing these words in my best-selling blog. Go figure. Liminal spaces do funny things to us. Oh, and by best-selling, I mean worst-selling.
This too shall pass. King Solomon is said to have worn a ring with that phrase on it. At least AI, via Google, tells me this is the case. All Things Must Pass is George’s Harrison’s take on that idea. Things are always passing away and I’m doing my best to enjoy this liminal moment that will soon turn into the next liminal moment.
What day is it today? Who cares.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 