“We’re waiting for everything to die,” our neighbor lamented, sweeping the late-autumn leaves in September from her front doorstep.
Her garden, the drought, of course, I reassured myself.
But my head was where it’s been all season, where our collective imagination has been: with the end of our species, that other drought source.
When I think about mass human extinction, I mainly think of my children, standing somewhere, a back yard, the curb where the bus picks them up, thinking “is this all there is then?” How indoors small their existences have been.
Surely too small to feel as full as a lifetime, one that has made them both drunk in joy and despair in nihilism. We haven’t run the gauntlet together yet, they and I. Yes, there’s been love and summer trips with bonfires, fireflies, barbecues, axes, arguments that reach slamming doors. They know snow and they know a plane tree from an oak tree, our garden birds. They’ve watched from the kitchen window a neighbor’s cat steal baby squirrels. They’ve had multiple favorite colors. But they haven’t fallen in crushing love, been dumped, written a thesis, failed to pay a bill, wanted to believe in god, thrown out their backs, held a baby that’s not a brother in their arms, slept alone on a beach, driven a car, French kissed someone they like, French kissed someone they don’t like, slogged through Ulysses or The Waves, or even Dickens for that matter. They have no idea f and s sounded the same in Middle English! They’ve never wrestled with an artist whose work they love and personhood they detest, wondered if they could buy a house, decided between saving for a car or backpacking in Patagonia, they haven’t yet hated me as much as they will, they’ve probably loved me as much as they ever will, but not in spite of all the things that will annoy them. And that early love is easy, not tried and so not quite so true. They haven’t noticed veins protruding on the backs of their hands, made a decision about surgery, bought their own jacket. Never intentionally hung up on anyone, thought about going on a diet, noticed their parents forgetting, sat in a movie theater alone, gossiped about co-workers, warmed up leftovers they made themselves, wished the kids would just go to bed.
Each of them has felt the warm flank of a large animal, made crowns of leaves, rooted for a butterfly. They know sand and wind, but they have never tried to repair a sink or toilet. Theirs has been the lifespan of a domestic rabbit.
Barely a pimple, they’ve never heard “it’s not you, it’s me.” But they’ve had ice cream stolen by gulls, I shore myself. Been lost. And found. They’ve been friendly with squirrels, admired their own moles. They have cried then been silent watching a balloon sail away.
They don’t even realize yet what great hair they have.
And then I think of your children, those songs they make up on long drives, how they make smiles out of orange rinds, gave your dog a mohawk and haven’t yet mourned a pet’s death or learned to sort colors for laundry.
And the girl here, with the leaf stuck in her hair, she’s so fast on the monkey bars, wow! And the boy over there with his finger in his mouth, popping it out proud as a freed fish. They’re always on the side of resilience, aren’t they?
And the baby not here yet—you felt her kick? May I? Oh—
Who knows what machines will care about? That story of the early garden, flesh and skin and bark and scale and leaf and blossom fruit: who could’ve guessed then what we would and wouldn’t care for?