This is a phrase a friend of mine used to use, and I love it. I get the full image: someone lying on the ground, as after a fall, perhaps one incurred while tossing bread crumbs from a muddy bank. The ducks, which had been happy recipients of this beneficence, see their chance at The Whole Loaf and come splashing and quacking up from the water. They surround the fallen, a frantic, feathery flock, pecking and snapping at any available morsel, bread or arm or toe.

The flaw in the metaphor is: the image is comical. There’s no real possibility of danger, as these are not creatures that will drag you to the pond and pull you under. The water is still a ways off, and is by no means closing over your head.

In real life, however, the accumulation of all these “little things” is indeed enough to drown you. It wears you down with all the different needs for attention, for action, for soothing, for strategy. It renders your will and your spirit the sole arbiters of how you hang on, and that’s not always a good thing. Some of us are a little shaky in those departments. Or, perhaps, we’re just inclined to see the probability of bad if we can’t see the near-certainty of good.

And so, when the rental lease is almost up; the house-under-contract-to-buy is messing around with closing dates; the house-not-under-contract-to-sell needs all sorts of sprucing up (and is four states away); the job is overwhelming; the kids aren’t sleeping; the hubs isn’t finding the work he loves; etc. etc. etc…well, it can be hard to keep moving forward in a cheerful way.

And this is what I try to remember, then: Crying is okay. Friends are miraculous (and BLESS THEM, my amazing helpers!). Children grow up (and, presumably, less hostile). These are problems of great privilege. This moment is only this moment, even if it seems like lasting all day. Things can turn for the good just as fast as they turn for the bad. And I’ve done harder things than this and survived. (But holy CRAP there are a lot of hard things right now.) So we try to treat each other gently and breathe in and out and read Anne Lamott and Pema Chodron and anyone else who can remind us with grace and humor that survival is possible and maybe even desirable. Whatever. One moment — one duck — at a time.