Lost in Corn

Parenting Depression

Most days she doesn’t want to leave her room. A virulent combination of hard-coded ennui and ‘gram induced dysmorphia.

Congratulations society! Women now inflict on themselves the insidious beauty standards propped up by advertising from the comfort of their selfies.

It took some convincing, but 1 decided she would accompany us to the corn maze. Depression is a monster that regenerates every day and parenting in such conditions can leave you battle worn. I’m just on the sideline’s; she’s on the green roughing it out. I convinced her fresh air, and new experience is the start of a healer’s armory. Warrior healer is the best bet for survival. The apple cider might have helped also.

The desert and corn are exotic bedfellows. Middle America brought here to entertain red state affectations. Hayrides and the fresh smell of open fields that are cultivated and cut for this Rockwell wistfulness. Our appetites aimed themselves at melted butter on fat kernels brought on by the living smell-o-vision. However, this was feed corn. Leave it to the wasteland to bring succulents that can’t satiate.

We entered the maze as a family, 3 leading the way in all her girlish moxie. This way, guys. No, that’s a dead end. She was small enough to walk the beds leaving us behind. The wind through large cicadian husks perched on think reeds, dry and scratchy against the breeze. The Indian summer stripping the fall from the air bleating sunshine down in steaming rays. We were unprepared for such warmth.

One wandered off alone as she is apt to do, finding herself a spot of silence. The small murmuration of birds unbothered by scarecrows as no one thought to protect novelty corn. She considered Potter battling it out with Bellatrix, racing towards the swampy showdown. Of films that staked out amid the rows of grainy Americana. She gathers experience like a location scout; we tuck this feeling away in case it’s needed in our next project. The way the corn littered the ground. The painted blood left on leaves from when this spot is haunted. Mazes out of perspective so the greens and yellows yearn towards cloudless blue.

I got a thank you which felt precisely like a magical button. Maybe in this new world, she could be happy even for a moment. Lost in sweetness.