And again.

I apologize for being so silent these days. Here are some tidbits and snippets:

-My mother had spinal fusion surgery over the Christmas holiday week. She is healing really well so far, though it will take several months for her to completely recover.

-I am in love with the writer Annie Proulx at the moment. So far, Postcards is my favorite novel of hers. I read it during the sleepless nights I spent in the hospital with my mother after her operation. (Who can sleep in a hospital? Too many machines.) It is a beautiful book. But very sad. Very, very sad. Too sad, maybe. Yes.

-It snowed and snowed last week. The days were bitter cold. In the very early mornings, I stood on our icy patio drinking coffee. Waiting on the sunrise, waiting for the first light to shine on the tree limbs frozen in frost. Everything bright white and stuck still. Beautiful. I love the smell of snow.

-In November, my sister and I were driving on a bridge over a river. Frost lined the edges of her windows, mud splattered against her wheel wells. A clump of gray clouds covered half the sky, drooping low over the mountains in the west. The road before us was dark and damp. Beneath the bridge, fog rose up from the river and slithered through bare tree limbs wilting over the water. I said, This morning is beautiful. She said, You are always confusing sadness with beauty.

-I love this song. It plays on a loop in my head:




-I always confuse sadness with beauty.

-My good friend sent me a letter in the mail the other day. I really miss her. We used to take walks through the crowded streets of the little beach town where she lived. We walked everywhere. We’d walk past the neighborhood amateur bands rehearsing in their garages; their drums and guitars and echoing voices mixing with the sound of passing cars, tires crunching asphalt, the laughter of people talking on their front lawns. All of it blending together. A soundtrack that followed us all along the cement sidewalk, growing fainter and fainter. Everything fading away behind us. We’d walk to the farmer’s market in the center of town every week. We’d walk to a cluster of cliffs lining the ocean to watch surfer boys ride the waves. We’d walk along the shore line. Sea foam and beach sand. Surf boards tied the roofs of VW Bugs. Classic. I miss the way the late afternoon sunlight used to fall through her living room window while we sat with her boyfriend at her coffee table listening to her old records. A glowing rectangle of light stretching across the bright blue carpet. Her cat napping on the floor under a wooden chair. What did we talk about? I miss it all.

-The morning when the snow began to melt, I was holding my nephew’s hand as we walked through the school yard to his kindergarten class. Little wet leaves and stray grass blades clung to his sneakers as we made our way across the sopping ground. While the birds chirped in the branches above us, my nephew said, This day feels haunted. I said, I was thinking the exact same thing. I love days like this.

-I always confuse sadness with beauty.

-I take my mother on short little walks to help her build her strength up again. She no longer walks crooked like a question mark. Her steps are slow, but her back is straight now. She is doing really well. Today, we almost made it to the end of our street. Almost.

-The sun sets around 4:30 in the afternoon and I listen to Sigur Ros with my mother. We look out our living room window and watch the sky change colors. It is beautiful.

Isn’t it?

-I always confuse sadness with beauty.

This is my life these days.

I’m still here. I’m sorry I keep disappearing and reappearing over and over again. And again. And again.