Tax Season

My new friend Smee has directed me to do one gentle thing for myself every day for two weeks. This is an interesting assignment. Self-care I can do, but it usually takes the form of a hard run up five flights of stairs. Gentle? What is that? Play, a light touch, bouyacy? Last night, I belted out a lengthy repertoir of show-tunes in bed with the Bug. We were in bliss. Close enough.

Tonight, I am alone. Tee has taken Bug to a hockey game. I've already walked the dog, eaten the dinner, done the laundry, and packed the gym bag for tomorrow. What is left but Smee's homework? Ah, well. Dangerous question.

Bleepin' taxes.

I take a detour from my friend's assignment. Time to download the TurboTax CD. I begin, still folding clothes and feeling pretty dang good about how much time remains in this big, quiet night. Then the CD freezes. I re-boot, fiddle with settings. The computer grumbles through my nudges before finally staging a strike. The CPU withstands a round of verbal abuse but still refuses to budge. Pressure squeezes my temples, chest, jaw.

Once upon a time, a vibrant and independent girl leapt at her taxes at the start of every year. It sounds a little crazy, I know. But the math was a puzzle, and comparing deductions a compelling game. I liked the tables, finding my way. I did the taxes every year. Even for Tee. Even when we were dating. When we morphed into a unit with a single last name, the taxes were still a form of play.

Then we began moving. Then moving some more. Only three out of the past eight years have we lived in a single state during a tax year. Relocation expenses, car registrations, investment laws changing across time zones. Because Tee out earning the cash and I was home with the babe, I managed the increasingly burdensome finances. Year after year. State after state. During every first quarter, I diligently compiled documents and forced a smile, tight as it had become.

Now Tee is at the hockey game with our son. Here I sit in front of my internet download of TurboTax (couldn't ever get the dang CD to work). Every piece of data I enter into the system reminds me of the grim reality of our circumstances. Copious amounts of money disappeared selling off our already meager investments before and during the move. More cash drained away as we divided up our anemic bank accounts and our households. This is the first move in which we did not receive any reimbursments for our relocation expenses, so this girl has yet to summon the nerve to glance at those receipts.

My buddy Ben Franklin was right about death and taxes. At this moment, the former is looking more appealing. But what's the use of letting irritation eat me up? Every financial advisor counsels tough love. You've got to look hard and straight at what you spend, what you owe, and where you can go from here. My skin may have been thick before, but this new life seems is wrapping me in rhinocerous hide. Tackling the taxes may require copious amounts of cursing under my breath, but this gal has it in her to do whatever needs doing.

Still, I can't help but wonder what comes after this. No windfalls await me. The resources for easing our way -- my son's and mine -- seem impossibly out of reach. Managing the money is no longer a game. The stakes are far too high. Perhaps this is the biggest heartbreak of all.

But then I think of Smee.She and her husband had their own plan this weekend. As they plowed through their annual finances, they decided to stop at regular intervals during the torture to make a little whoopie. "Tax and Shag Sunday." That is the way to approach these things if one happens to have a mate in the vicinity who is primed for action.

As for me? I must stop entirely for the moment and get my bearings. Is it possible to approach this task with the deftness my friend suggests? I may not be playing with Monopoly money, but taking account of finances may simply be another way of gazing in dumb wonder at the life unfolding in my hands. I can attempt to give it shape, sure. But my touch must be delicate, because every gesture has the power to shape me in return.

For now, I am closing downTurboTax. I have to take a walk under the misted moon, smooth almond oil into my skin, and take a dozen deep breaths. When I am kind to myself, I rest. And when I rest, my mind has a way of revealing paths I could not conceive with all my thinking and agitated work. Sometimes, in my calmest moments, I even forget to worry about the future. As I let the pressure ease, the thought occurs to me that the resources my son and I need might already be right here, in my grasp, in this moment. It's a strange and delicious possibility.

Being gentle is a kind of currency whose worth does not appear in the normal calculations. I will make my own small deposit in this secret account and trust in the magic of compounding interest.