the last blue iris

August A year ago we were in the thick of it. After 10 years of cross-country travel, 24 years of abuse from my ex, one would have thought the first year would have been easy. But how does one prepare for freedom when you've never known it? Last fall was the hardest year of our lives. And yet, I have never seen more clearly my love for my boy, R.'s love for our family, the safe landing we have built here, more clearly. J has asked me not to write about this time, so this is as much as I can say, but here we are on the other side.  Yesterday he and I walked through the Mt. Tabor neighborhood and talked about music and art and life; on Thursday, he heads back to [insert college name here] to begin his sophomore year.  I never thought about being in my late 40s (JFC, even to say that, late 40s , feels weird, ancient and yet I am the youngest I will ever be). I have published three collections of poetry. I sing with (and produce, and am president of the board) an opera company, si...

June 29th I told R. that I haven't been able to sleep the past two nights--up in the thin hours with panic-brain. It's pretty hard to find something to panic about these days,  he said.  Of course, I can panic about anything . He and D. are heading to Armenia today and then to Cambridge where D. will be spending the summer on study abroad. We briefly had a discussion of me joining them in London for a few days, but complicating factors (my passport was lost years ago, and is most definitely expired anyway; planning an international trip in a few weeks was enough to send me into a tailspin. Instead, we decided to move our future-Europe trip up to next summer. Anyway, I still don't like him leaving because I only know how to catastrophize, but I'm also glad D. isn't going alone. Anyway. R. is right though--after a year (and honestly, the decade before that) of panic, things are...normal. J. is home for the summer and applying for any job he can find. Today he intervie...

On Friday, the vet came and I held Mr. Bill in my arms as he left this world and went back to wherever it is we come from, wherever it is we go. It had been a difficult night for him, and he could barely walk, was incontinent, was clearly in pain. Earlier that morning, I picked J. up from his dorm and we drove home in silence. Then, around 2 PM, I held the dog in my arms as the vet administered the last shot.  I was 30 years old when I adopted Mr. Bill; J. had just turned two. We had just moved into our apartment post-divorce with our two cats, and I had left Luther and Charlie, the dogs I had with my ex, with him because I couldn't find an apartment that would accept two dogs and two cats. I was paying my mortgage and my rent, and I was terrified and desperate. But I'd never lived alone, and had never really lived without a dog before. So I saw Mr. Bill's photo on a rescue site, and drove out to Richland, Michigan where I picked him up from an animal hoarder's house. H...

 Today we learned that our 17 year old dog, Mr. Bill, dog of my divorce, J.'s double, is nearing the end of his days, and we need to decide soon when he will compassionately exit this life. I sobbed for an hour, called J., picked him up from his dorm, sobbed some more. Mr. Bill can barely walk, can't stand up on his own anymore without assistance or a rug, has lost enough weight that his bones are traced beneath his thin fur. But he still eagerly eats the cat's food, can magically hear when I open a can of dog food (though he cannot hear much else, nor see, nor understand where he is or why most of the time.) I have always hoped he would die peacefully in his sleep and I would not have to make this decision, having made it traumatically for numerous animals before him. But. I do not think that will be the case. This week is our birthdays, J. and me. He'll be 19, I'll be 47. Both feel impossibly old and young at the same time. We have had Mr. BIll since I was 30 and ...

 All week, the weather app on my phone has threatened apocalypse at the furthest range of the forecast: snow, temperatures in the teens. Meteorologists have been quick to temper with caveats: we don't know much that far out, it's unlikely in an el nino winter to have a snowstorm, etc.  Living in the Midwest, you can see your weather coming: great colorful blobs moving eastward along the jet stream from the West Coast to appear as thunderstorms, blizzards, arctic blasts. Here, the weather moves silently across the Pacific, out of sight (I guess?) of weather satellites and all the vaguaries and mysteries of the Pacific, and we know about it a few days before it arrives. Snowstorms appear in Portland sometimes unannounced, sneak in and change their mind somewhere beyond the buoys and the city shuts down.The city panics, like most places that aren't used to regular snow. Life stops, busses rattle down the streets with chains on their tires, people cross country ski to the liquo...