Coming out

I’m like a 22 year-old gymnast trying to stage a comeback just before the Olympics. I can’t really compete with the 15 year-old pixies whose bodies remain lean and limber. But I’m trying to come out of retirement for one more moment of glory. And I’ve been thinking about just what event—which competition—merited a comeback to this space. Everything seemed just shy of enough.
 
Like that rainy day in March when the miraculous happened: a self-peeling banana showed up in my fruit bowl. It was so unexpected, so delightful that I contemplated it as the object of my return. But then I thought, "A banana, really?" After five months of silence a banana seemed hardly to suffice. It lacked personal interest and what really could I say about this miracle of fruit (other than I was too freaked out to actually eat it)?

The same problem plagued my other March miracle. I woke one morning to find the "weeds" that I had been pulling all last summer had transformed themselves into rosy bleeding hearts. I tried to write about this, but kept recurring to cheesy lines about hearts that never die. I couldn't help but writing cliches and so I gave up before I posted.

But in April there was a much anticipated reunion of our canine lovers, a sure thing to get me back to blogging. For several months we prepared Homer for Lucy's visit. Every time he was naughty, we threatened him with the notion that Lucy would have to stay at home. And yet, she arrived--with her humans in tow--and Homer had 72 glorious hours of romping, humping (Homer is, needless to say, always a bottom), squirrel-chasing, and co-sleeping. But even this somehow lacked the compelling visual interest to get me back here.

And then there was a whole lot of quick making, but taken one project at a time, I couldn't justify ending retirement for so paltry an offer. The world is a fertile place these days and I found myself scrambling at the last minute(s) to finish these:

The quick making, though, seemed to zap all of my energy (not to mention the three new classes, the housework, the reading, the annual spring blues). I wanted to come out of retirement with a glorious culinary feat, but J and I have lived on beans, tacos, and mediocre avocados for several months now.

So here's the rub: no one project, no single event, no stunning read is enough to get me back here when I've been gone so long. My only hope is that by checking in more often, I won't need the Olympics to compel my return. Instead, I'll again find the prosaic enough to get me here...and hopefully keep me.