THE YOUNGER [5 minutes before she had to leave for school this morning]: Mom, I literally have no pants I can wear to school.

ME [tentatively, understanding this is some sort of test]: But you’re wearing pants?

THE YOUNGER: But I can’t wear these to school.

ME [reflexively, even while understanding the answer will not make sense to me]: Why not?

THE YOUNGER: Because I wore them to school yesterday.

ME [making recourse to “logic,” still acting as if my task in this exchange is to prove that she literally does have pants she can wear to school]: So that means you can wear them to school!

THE YOUNGER: [very slowly, as if talking to someone with limited comprehension]: No, Mom, I can’t wear them to school BECAUSE I wore them to school yesterday.

ME [still not recognizing this is more like a one-person flash mob than a conversation]: OK, so wear a different pair of pants.*

THE YOUNGER [now speaking more loudly and taking big gulps of air between words]: Mom. You’re not. Listening. I said, I literally have no pants I can wear to school.

ME: [why am I still talking? I don’t know why]: But you have lots of pants!

THE YOUNGER: No, I don’t.

ME [pointing to chair triumphantly, for some reason thinking ocular demonstration will win the day] There! There are two pairs of pants right. there! You can wear either of those.

THE YOUNGER: I can’t wear those.

ME: Why not?

THE YOUNGER: They are too big.

ME: They are too big?

At this point I feel my mind beginning to slip loose from my body. I bend over holding my head in my hands and hear a kind of groan, I think it comes from me. I know the bloody pants are too bloody big. You know how I know? Because I was with her when she bought them and she bought them that way on purpose. On purpose. So that they would look too big. Because that was the effect she was trying to achieve lo those many weeks ago.  

ME [why am I asking this question or any question?]: What will happen if you wear the same pants you wore yesterday?

THE YOUNGER: [stares stonily at me, not dignifying this question with a response. Which, in retrospect: fair.]

ME: OK, well ….

THE YOUNGER: So what do I do?

ME: What do you mean?

THE YOUNGER: [increasingly using the tone you would use to say, again, “there is a bomb in this building,” to someone not reacting with the appropriate urgency]: Mom. I. literally. Have. No. pants. I can. Wear. To school. So what do I do? What do I do?

ME: I mean, I don’t know what to say. What do you want me to say? You do [a slightly hysterical chirrup of a giggle escapes my lips despite myself] you do have to wear pants … I believe … to school. You can’t go, uh, without pants.

Do I see a flash of a smile also pass across her face, or is it just my imagination?

THE YOUNGER: So what do I do?

ME: [in the tone I would use to make a guess I’m pretty sure is wrong in answer to a riddle]: Umm …. you wear the pants you’re wearing even though you wore them yesterday?

THE YOUNGER: Mom. You’re not understanding, Mom.

ME: [now fully engulfed in helpless and unhelpful giggles]: I’m not understanding. Yes. I, I, I, I, I’m not understanding. That’s right. I, I , I, I  just don’t know. I don’t even know where. I don’t know what …

THE YOUNGER: …. And even if I wore these, I don’t have a top I could wear with them.

ME: [seizing, like a hostage negotiator, on this tiniest movement]: Oh, well, tops! Tops! There are plenty of tops! There’s this and this–or even this!

THE YOUNGER: But they don’t have hoods.

Our exchange continued for quite a while longer after this because I was very slow to realize what I was there for, which, I would say now, three hours later, was not to solve the problem of having literally no pants to wear to school but to bear witness to this problem as it arose and crested and then passed away. The only thing to do with flashmobs is to wait for them to be over.

I should have realized this earlier because just last night I had my own version of this experience. I suddenly became aware of my feelings pricking uncomfortably against my eyes and fingertips; it was one of those autonomic inner flashmobs in which my emotions seemed to slide out of joint with my intentions, my body to slide out of joint with my surroundings. In the moment I wouldn’t have described the problem as literally having no pants I could wear to school; but it would have been as good a description as any. In such moments you don’t need an interlocutor to answer the question “what do I do?” but rather a witness—external or internal—to hear your discomfort find expression in the question: What do I do? What do I do? It is a question that does not go away because it is answered, but because it recedes into the background, until next time.

At a certain point I left the room and, at a certain point after that, the younger emerged, wearing a hoodie and the same pants she’d been wearing all along, ready to go to school.

Note

* The reader should be aware that other types of lower-body garments are not an option in this scenario.