A little shivering possum was here eating tonight.
I am glad to be able to feed it. It is small and a little clumsy in the snow. I wish you could hear the adorable noise it makes when chewing.
So, the joy of unemployment is the unhurried snow shoveling, catering to the feral cat colony, making snow angels with the dog, feeding the birds and possums and raccoons, taking a walk with corn and crackers in the pocket for the ducks.
But the agony of unemployment is the bills arriving today, some from the ER visit in October, the MRI in December…
It reminds one to be clear what one is living for.
I always wanted to be a grandmother and now that I am Aunty to two small children (and to two lovely older nieces also) I find that that is the fulfillment of that same desire.
But I have two lives now. On opposite coasts.
My bi-coastal personality disorder in full swing.
(And what happens when we add the triangulating power of Virginia?)
I have twin lives. My life is its own twin.
And both lives are beautiful.
(I had tried other lives but they wouldn’t have me.)
But while here in the East, I am missing the growingness of the babies in the west.
And so I try to make the most sensible use of this time and right now this means to write and write as much as I can in the hopes I can someday achieve another dream I have of writing a particular children’s book which I have started but abandoned. More than once.
But what if I cannot write that book and meanwhile the niece and nephew grow tall as beanstalks? What if while I toil in the Paper Mines the children grow up and go off to school and then college and then have families of their own and grow old and die and I am still here toiling?
It is a book I want to write for them. And for my childhood self. And for all the children.
And while I am on the topic, what was your favorite childhood book?
Did you ever see The Double Life of Veronique? I first saw that movie in my very early twenties and it perfectly captured the feeling I had had my entire life~that I had two lives and one was going on simultaneously elsewhere.
Do you think I will be able to write my way out of this?
So, the joy of unemployment is the unhurried snow shoveling, catering to the feral cat colony, making snow angels with the dog, feeding the birds and possums and raccoons, taking a walk with corn and crackers in the pocket for the ducks.
But the agony of unemployment is the bills arriving today, some from the ER visit in October, the MRI in December…
It reminds one to be clear what one is living for.
I always wanted to be a grandmother and now that I am Aunty to two small children (and to two lovely older nieces also) I find that that is the fulfillment of that same desire.
But I have two lives now. On opposite coasts.
My bi-coastal personality disorder in full swing.
(And what happens when we add the triangulating power of Virginia?)
I have twin lives. My life is its own twin.
And both lives are beautiful.
(I had tried other lives but they wouldn’t have me.)
But while here in the East, I am missing the growingness of the babies in the west.
And so I try to make the most sensible use of this time and right now this means to write and write as much as I can in the hopes I can someday achieve another dream I have of writing a particular children’s book which I have started but abandoned. More than once.
But what if I cannot write that book and meanwhile the niece and nephew grow tall as beanstalks? What if while I toil in the Paper Mines the children grow up and go off to school and then college and then have families of their own and grow old and die and I am still here toiling?
It is a book I want to write for them. And for my childhood self. And for all the children.
And while I am on the topic, what was your favorite childhood book?
Did you ever see The Double Life of Veronique? I first saw that movie in my very early twenties and it perfectly captured the feeling I had had my entire life~that I had two lives and one was going on simultaneously elsewhere.
Do you think I will be able to write my way out of this?
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