At 3:30 in the morning of\u00a0a day in\u00a0the first week of\u00a0January it\u2019s almost dark outside but for reflections of starlight off faceted sparkles of fresh snow that\u2019s been falling since before dinner yesterday.<\/p>\n
Another year.<\/p>\n
The to-do list stretches for pages and hasn\u2019t changed much in months which piles guilt upon guilt for my aimlessness, inattention, lack of focus. I\u2019m writing but not publishing, floating but not boating, sitting and not scrubbing, driving not to any destination. But that\u2019s so often what I do.<\/p>\n
Still, it was a year like no other. I was wandering about without plan, fulfilling duties and wants and needs not necessarily in that order. She didn\u2019t just fall into my life, I extended a tentative invitation that was accepted with complete abandon. I wasn\u2019t using the better judgement that failed me so often in the past because there\u00a0was something in how she danced to my music and her fingertips brushed my cheek and I couldn\u2019t stay away or push away, so often my way. Surprisingly she didn\u2019t run away when my smallnesses were put on display.<\/p>\n
Another year.<\/p>\n
At 3:30 in the morning it\u2019s easy to lose faith that everything will get done, that everything is as it should be, that obligations can be met, that it will all work out. Worries at this hour expand\u00a0larger than accomplishments which shrink to triviality. From dust to dust seeks to leave out the middleman and shortcut through my soul. I do this once in a while.<\/p>\n
Falling snow absorbs every sound and silence lays inches deep all around except for a cough or sniffle in the other room interspersed with sighs of sleep when she slips back into slumber.<\/p>\n
After she fell last month and broke her lovely face she asked if I could still love her, and I didn\u2019t know how to respond to words spoken in a language I was never taught as a child and don\u2019t understand. After she fell I cared for her as if I cared for nothing else and was better for it. Ask me to do anything or everything and I will try to do more but I am a wordsmith and words only point at what\u2019s real, to speak must\u00a0not substitute for what is best shown. If I show love why ask?<\/p>\n
Another year.<\/p>\n
St. Michael offers a candle in the night, ’tis better to love than be loved, to comfort than be comforted, to forgive than be forgiven; to forget oneself is to remember.<\/p>\n
Softness slips up from those words to suture my\u00a0roughed-up serenity. The coffee pot clicks and snaps and the freezer hums and plocks cubes into the bin, walls creak and crack with contractions from near zero cold. \u00a0Today she gets stronger, the lists are winnowed and expand again because that\u2019s what they\u2019re for, snow sloughs from the roof\u00a0in dawning light and soon we\u2019ll be on our way to wherever we\u2019re supposed to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 3:30 in the morning of\u00a0a day in\u00a0the first week of\u00a0January it\u2019s almost dark outside but for reflections of starlight off faceted sparkles of fresh snow that\u2019s been falling since before dinner yesterday.<\/p>\n
Another year.<\/p>\n
The to-do list stretches for pages and hasn\u2019t changed much in months which piles guilt upon guilt for my aimlessness, inattention, lack of focus. I\u2019m writing but not publishing, floating but not boating, sitting and not scrubbing, driving not to any destination. But that\u2019s so often what I do.<\/p>\n
Still, it was a year like no other. I was wandering about \u2026 Read more\u2026