resurrection

Remember this old friend? Or rather, these old friends?

I thought about these year-old pieces as I lay in bed this morning. A dear friend gave birth to Alexandra at 26 weeks on Thursday afternoon after several scary days of pre-eclampsia. I keep imagining her in Boston and loving her at a distance. It's only February and it's already been a year of tremendous struggle for those whom I love. This morning I'm thinking about my Dad in the hospital after six weeks of chemo and radiation and now with a paralyzing back pain. He's gearing up for a major surgery on March 10th, but as he's wont to do, he's been pushing himself too hard, skiing too much, and now his body is resisting all the change. But how to convince a man who has sprinted through life to s l o w d o w n?

I took out these pieces for selfish reasons too. I put down my ragged copy of Stoddard's The Morgesons, a bizarre, otherworldly novel I'm teaching for the first time tomorrow. I set the microwave timer to 60:00 and let myself go. I needed to fall into these colors, to arrange and rearrange the parts. I needed to make space in my brain for something beautiful, something tangible and changeable. I needed to press pause on suffering -- ah, the luxury to do so --- and indecision.

When the timer rang, I had only worked out a few details at the bottom of one row. Now it's back to Stoddard and to worry and to the decision that's been in the front of my mind for nine days now. J and I are deciding between remaining in Kentucky or moving to Arkansas. We're deciding between his tenure-track job and one for me, deciding between the known and the unknown, between bits of nervous fear and bits of established comfort. We're deciding on the shape of things to come.