Inchoate

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 The closer it gets to a year, the--

what. Emptier, more wordless, more--

I got my hair cut today and could barely hold a conversation with my hairdresser, one of the smartest and most interesting people I have met in Portland. I felt--


tongue-tied, floaty, out of my body. In her yard, peacocks. Her cat as big as a small dog. Her dog a sausage with satellite dish ears. J. was with me and I had a hard time talking as we drove home. 

We were out of the house, for a few minutes. Further away from home than we've been since we got back from Michigan. It was the first non-family, non-zoom-work/opera board/therapist interaction I've had. the first in-person interaction. I still feel like I'm the tin man, like I no longer know how to move in the world.

It's almost spring here--song sparrows are singing, towhees and jays and juncos are making their nests and little clouds of lesser goldfinches swoop over the earth. The sweetbox has bloomed, the edgeworthia, now comes the daphne and camellia, hellebore and all of the other flowering western plants I still don't know the names of. We have been here seven years.

Signs are popping in lawns around the neighborhood, mostly in neighboring Laurelhurst, that seat of privilege and not in North Tabor, where we live, which is more modest. Open minds Open schools! Oregon, Washington, and California have taken the road of caution, have very few in-person classes. Unlike Chicago or places east of here. We need more East coast toughness, a notoriously shitty PPS mom was quoted in the New York Times. By tough we mean: we are tired of the inconvenience. We do not care if you die. I have been designated eligible for a vaccine as soon as May 1st; the rest of the family after that. The boys are not yet 16, but almost. J. and I travel to Michigan in three weeks. We'll be as safe as we can be.

Today J. and I walked the olden dog, who can't stop moaning. The sun was yellow on our shoulders. This morning there was a hummingbird in the bare snowball bush, a pair of sparrows, crows crossing the brightening sky. All four chickens are laying. I let them out into the barren yard a half hour before sunset. We're getting a new roof next week. R.'s mother has been in and out of the hospital. My mother got her second vaccination. I have learned a half-recital's worth of new repertoire and have no idea when and if I'll ever sing again. I'm turning 44 in May. I feel most confident about my abilities to: bake bread, cookies, run while listening to audio books. 

I don't know what I will be when I see you next. I miss you. We are all so lonely. 

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