Today and only Today

There are 4 inches of ice on the pond. We were hoping this would happen while the kids were here, after the burial. But Lilly went back to NYC on January 2nd, after being bumped from 3 flights New Years Day, and Nick drove back down to New Orleans on Friday afternoon, after stopping by to say goodbye in the cold lobby of the hospital. It's been hard to go back into work this week, walking back into the building is so strange. What is the feeling? But this is a small town, and we can't push things away, avoid pain by maintaining a physical distance from the places saturated with our sorrows. I see the nurses who treated my father in the hall; I see the ICU attending in HyVee; the grave digger is a patient. Maybe that's a good thing. I hope so. What am I going to do? Move? My mother is living in my little house. She complains about it, but she likes it. It's a good house--filled with love and images of the Blessed Virgin. It's a little shabby, but there's always been a jewel box like feel to it. My living room there is the most comfortable, nap inducing, sanctuary I can imagine. People immediately feel it's ok to say what they want, pick up a book, rifle through the music stand--it is a good place, and I know my mother, who never managed to create that in her house, feels it. She's kept the Gypsy on, and that's good. But she wasn't there Saturday, so I spent part of the day over there. We aren't fighting. I'm angry, but I love her. I made myself some canned soup, went into Lilly's old bedroom, and finished my dictations from clinic. I'm slow. No one seems annoying. Everyone seems rumpled, vulnerable, lost. I think about the thousand and one small ways I sin against my fellows--with impatience, selfishness, lack of attention. When I got back to our farm, Jay had made a bonfire on the bank of our little pond (we've had sand carted in to make a sweet little beach), and he had a boombox down on the dock playing Christmas music. We skated out into the dusk. The ice was very clear, and the obsidian pond stretched below my skates, which needed sharpening. I felt that I was suspended between two darknesses, held by this temporary firmament, on these shaky old blades. I used to be a figure skater in my youth, and I can feel the ghost of my younger body, gliding and spinning and jumping--but my physique doesn't follow. This disconnect--I suppose the gap just continues to widen over the years. But we held hands and found our way. Sat by the fire and had malibu rum laced thick hot chocolate with heavy cream. We are in a mirror darkly seen, but then face-to-face.