Spectres of Dancing

Fuck, why can’t I do this anymore? I’ve got all the focus of a three-year old with a World Book Encyclopedia Atlas. Sorry, my friends, I’ve become a bad blogger. To those of you who have been waiting to hear my wit and slightly caustic sense of humor, well, it’s missing these days. Or not. Mostly, I’m using those talents, when I have them, in the classroom or on the porch and have not reserved a lot of time out of those spaces to come in and write things down. This is supposed to be a log and instead it seems to be more like a message in a bottle, or a postcard from the middle – “Having a grand time, wish you were here.”

In the background, of course, is the fact that my mother is still seriously ill, but she’s bucked this last challenge (a bowel surgery) with all the grace and strength that she bucked some of the earlier challenges, so it’s still very serious, but she does not die today.

In the foreground is the edgy kind of anxiety you get when you have a lot to do and you’re playing hooky writing blogs. Maybe its because this blog was supposed to be a kind of translation from the world of those who have children to those who don’t about what the experience is, why anyone would do this to themselves and what the draw of the little boo-boo face and those little arms around your neck at bedtime really are. It’s a fool’s errand and I think only one who didn’t yet arrive there would think it were doable without getting squishy, sentimental or just plain dull. Nothing is so dull as those who go on about their kids, except perhaps those who go on about their grandkids. Dull. Like watching the dirt not move or watching kudzu. Always gonna be there, nothing much new there and by the way, when is lunch?

Monster’s Ink, my new course at the college, has been a blast. We’re doing ghosts next, hauntings, traces, poltergeists and things that go bump in the night. I’ve been studying this stuff since I was thirteen and can do this blindfolded. In fact, I owe those guys a final essay assignment that I promised last Thursday. I suppose, though, it’s not for nothing we’re doing ghosts this week. Trying to explain the life of being Connor’s mom to those who haven’t yet had the pleasure and torment of having an infant in the house is like trying to describe the green of Ireland or the round flavors of an Italian Chianti from the café off the Trevi Fountain before you’ve been there. Some things have to be lived. And in the midst of all this living, I’ll try to be better about dropping a postcard now and then to remind myself of how lovely the trip is being.