{Originally posted on Goody Bastos}

Juliet: I thought you were going to take out the trash.

Romeo: It’s your turn for the trash, my week to bag the recyclables. Look at the chore wheel on the fridge, for Chrissakes.

Little Tybalt (looking up from his Legos): Mommy, Daddy swore!

Romeo: A greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents to be the best husband and father, I’m sorry, Little Tybalt. It’s just that Mommy and Daddy have been through a lot.

Juliet: I’ll say. There was a plague on both our houses.

Little Tybalt: Hunh? What’s Mom talking about?

Juliet: Never mind. Why don’t you go play Wii?
(Little Tybalt takes his Legos and sulks off)

Juliet (reminiscing while drying the Ikea china): Remember how in love we were?

Romeo: Do I! It seemed to me you were a rich jewel upon the cheek of night.

Juliet: It seemed to me that parting was such sweet sorrow, and now I can’t wait for girl’s night out.

Romeo (slapping his palm to his forehead): O woe!

Juliet: What is it, honey?

Romeo: I forgot to take out the clothes from the washer. They’ll be all mildewy.

Juliet: Again? Didn’t I tell you not to forget to take them out of the washer? Little Tybalt’s gym clothes were in there and he needs them for gymnastics tomorrow. O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day. Most woeful day that ever, ever I did yet behold O day, O day, O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this. O woeful day! O woeful day!

(By D. Smith Kaich Jones)

the ever-wonderful michael was telling me about this thing that happened, and that’s because, well, remember? he said, that she is married to that guy? and this happened?, and then a while back when that was going on, there was this kid who . . . and his grandfather bought him this toy airplane, and he was friends with another kid, and did i ever mention that they moved across the street from these people who . . . ? and all those stories were separate from one another, but not really, they just looked that way on the surface, they were really all tied together, because that’s how stories work, at least stories in conversations, stories told by real people.

that’s what i think i do. at least that’s what i try to do. i start out telling you the story of painting the front room at work, and that reminds me of what i felt when i was buying the paint, the paint was yellow, honey colored, and that reminded me of autumn, and i remembered what i felt when i was standing in the paint store, waiting while the paint was mixed, lots of time for thinking and looking out the windows at the leaves falling away from trees, at the different blue of the sky, lots of time for remembering last autumn and where i would have been on a saturday morning, lots of time for wondering if my need to paint a few walls was a working out the grief i still feel for maggie-the-cat, remembering that’s what i did when my father died, not comparing the two deaths, just thinking about how people deal with grief and moving on, which is not the same thing as “getting over it”, it’s just moving to a different place in the grief. and i move from that thought back to autumn, which always gives me the blues, just not outside the window, and really it is late autumn that makes me feel this way; early autumn is just a phrase here in east texas, just a mellowing of summer, and i think about the leaves leaving, the turning away from the world that we all do; we go inside, even here where it doesn’t get all that cold ~ it gets cold enough ~ and i remember that that night is turn-back-the-clocks-night, an earlier darkness now, and i move from that thought back to maggie, back to my father, and i am filled with missing.

{Originally Published on Secret Agent Mama and originally featured right here on November 20, 2008}

Oh fiery colors, how short your stay,
Merrily tantalizing my sense of sight.
Against the blue sky, as if to blaze the way,
Towards the promise of a new day, bright.
It is in autumn that I reflect the most,
The end of the year spinning my mind around.
Like the trees that wait again to host,
My thoughts pause to absorb the sound.
Through the standstill, I look forward and back,
Considering past, dreams turn to a future of hope.
I wonder: Are the trees hopeful while they lack?
Or have they just found a way to cope?
My mind it is filled with worry and doubt.
Though my heart, a hopeful tree, dreams about.

{by Aidan Donnelley Rowley}

It is one of those moments. I am curled up in a bed not my own. Wrapped sloppily in scratchy wool. On my left side. It is late morning. The girls are outside playing with their father. Looking for hippos and dinosaurs. Making believe. Being kids.

And I am here. There. Resting. Because I am tired, so tired. And it’s quiet, so quiet, too quiet. In the distance, I hear the growl of a washing machine, the clanking of pots, the dragging of something big. But mostly? I hear the buzz of being alone.

An avalanche of anxiety. I think of all the things I must do and haven’t done. In the next two months. In my lifetime. I think of the sadness, sweet and stubborn, that lurks in the ale of adulthood; the pearly mist of melancholy we see and feel once we stop pretending. I think of my friend and the unthinkable tragedy she and her family suffered on Christmas day. On Christmas day.

I lie here. There. Body motionless, mind whirring with wonder and dread and, finally, some improbable and exquisite peace. I feel a kick. A thump. A something. Bold and strong and full of life. Just next to my belly button, that spot, small and centered, hidden so well. Beneath clothes and blankets and the most ferocious of fear. I reach my hand under the layers, real and imagined, splay my fingers wide and rest them there. I wait for more. For another movement. Another reminder. Another something.

And it comes. And here, there, alone, never alone, I smile to myself. And words come, a slow trickle, a silent stream.

Everything will be okay.