May 10, 2026

Home in my own chair after a whirlwind through a time machine filled with memories.

I don't know how to explain the last 36 hours.  It was a leap into the past, photos of old yards I knew so well, photos of children now facing middle age and the early death of their father who back in those days was so handsome, so funny.  I hear he got critical, I hear his own father was a bastard.  Around and around with funny stories and beautiful language depicting satire, irony and world a touch too difficult and complex.

Were you the love of my life?  I don't think so, I think everyone all together has been the love of my life, but you were just a tiny bit closer, just a tiny bit more attached to my hip bone, as you swept the pinto beans up off of the floor that I'd allowed toddler Ember to pour all over the kitchen as we made pretend soup for your arrival.  It never occured to me that I was placing obstacles in your path that would make you trip and fall.  Not that I wasn't apt to trip you, for some reason I found it funny.  Here you were trying to live your life without braces and crutches and in nicely ironed clothes and I found it funny to try to make you fall into the mud.  I slipped myself more than once and you calmly grabbed the broom and swept the floor.  

You bought the big stuff and I bought the everyday stuff.

You thought you hated fruit with meat, you found out I was right, it's delicious.

And chopping, preparing new meals became the canvas for new poems.

You read everything in sight, together we'd win Jeopardy.

Over 50 years of staying near, 50 years of authenticity, and in 24 hours I whipped through those years and admitted you would never hump me in the broom closet again.  Oh God, Jay, I'm sorry.

I used to be so proud and amazed at my own sense of time.  In the past four months its slipped away.  I drove home from Portland today and had no idea how long it took or how far I still had to go.  We made it to Northfield in less than 3 hours.  Can I tell you what I thought about all the way home?  More Jay stories, more analysis of my own unwillingness to want to give up on him.  Even at the end, in the last 8 months when he asked me not to come did I give up.  I think I thought he might pull it through.  Again, I was wrong.  I didn't go and see him, I just continued to text, share new poems and photos and ask silly questions.  It all melds into the last year.  I've lost my acute sense of time and gained a perspective on muddy. 

After some lunch and real food I took a long nap.  Slept really hard.  It's been a couple days since I've had a nap and I haven't slept very well.  Still going to bed early tonight.  I'm tired, this story telling, memory conveying, hugging people for the first time in 30 years stuff is exhausting. 

Then I went on up to the rookery.  Cloudy, 61 and 5:30 and the bird count was low, no swallows, no geese, none of the usual characters.  I saw 1 kingfisher.  I sat and wrote for a bit and watched a special on Martin Short.  Technology sure is interesting, but numing.  

Now I will go to bed early and read. This week I am going to try to organize my life again and slowly put furniture back in order, arrange rides to and from Springfield, set a time for writing aside and get to a mortgage company.  Wish me luck.

This was the first day I've seen the farm cat in almost a year, I think.  I don't know where he hangs out these days, but he's usually not by the barn when I drive by.  He's so beautiful.  

Grey catbird.