Contingency

My husband, children, and cat left this morning in the thick dark of pre-dawn, headed to New England to visit his family. I will join them Wednesday -- too much work to leave early and join them on their adventure.

Watching them drive away, I wanted to draw them back, give each another, deeper hug. Always, I worry -- suppose something happens? Suppose we never see each other again? The necessity of separation, of not being with the ones you love in case, fills me, the mother, with a low-frequency anxiety. It makes me aware that living cradles the same cusp as dying, of 'bad things happening', and to grasp the now with both hands and both feet.

Already, less than two hours later, the quietude I have craved overwhelms. It's an uneasy solitude I will likely feel comfortable with just hours before I leave. I've filled the space with cleaning a toilet, a garbage can, of picking up the cat's food bowl. I have walked through every room of the house, picked up errant socks and crumpled tissues. I have drunk two cups of coffee and thought about this blog post. But I cannot dwell on 'what ifs', on those contingencies which control me and not the other way around. I have a few hours of quiet, and must make the best of them, for I will crave them again all too soon when in the midst of the turmoil and noise that makes a family and a life. Peace...

Pomp, Circumstance, and All that Jazz...

Been quiet, mostly due to all the festivities surrounding end-of-the-year exams and papers and dissertation defenses, all culminating in the graduation of 160 or so pharmacy students and a handful of doctoral students from my department. Clearing the decks for a new batch of kids to arrive in August.

I love graduation. There's something about Pomp and Circumstance that makes me tear up, more than any old wedding march does. But, having lived and breathed academe all my adult life (other than a wee stint in the pharmaceutical industry and part-time evening work as a hospital pharmacist), I guess my weepiness is a natural reaction. For the ivory tower is one of my 'homes', a place I feel comfortable being, though not necessarily comfortable with.

As you shall see in the coming couple of years...

There's a lot I want to blog on, lot's happening in the mental health world, like the recent hooplah over the link between depression and pot, and which comes first, the sadness or the smoking. And cool stuff happening in the science of substance abuse. But all that will have to wait for a few weeks.

This post, I'm going to play the self-indulgent momma. Both my children have, in their own ways, been knocking down little and large obstacles. The other evening, my son overcame his nerves and finally entered the skateboard park where the big guys hang. It was thrilling to watch him, almost nine years old, figure out the park on his own, watch him try ramps and bars cautiously, then conquer them.

And my almost six-year-old daughter has had a series of firsts: first book read (One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish), first tooth lost, and first song composition:

By the river
of the stream
down went a fish
with love and hope.

--This post interrupted by said daughter, who is SUPPOSED to be asleep, but who ran from her room, jumping with glee because she JUST finished reading Green Eggs and Ham-- by herself --

So things are good. Very good...

THE WRITING... I'll likely be quieter than usual because I'm on a self-imposed deadline to get BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT completely off my desk and hopefully onto someone else's. Several small presses have reading periods, and I aim to get those queries in the mail over the next two weeks. AND... drum roll, please... complete the final pass on this blasted novel by May 31. I'm exactly half-way through and I am, thus far, pleased. It's my favorite kind of editing - the prose elevation stuff, the seeking of a more precise and elegant word.

Which means something new starting June 1.

Hmmm... wonder what????? Stay tuned...

Peace, Linda

PS. Another poem, my fifth, featured at Poetic Asides (MEMORY FORSAKEN; the prompt - a memory you cannot remember)