the last blue iris

 For the past week, Rob and I have been up in the mountains, writing. We have done this every summer since we moved in together. One of the benefits of marrying another writer is that we both understand the importance of long interrupted alone time, and we met at a writer's conference 14 years ago. Anyway, with a few exceptions (pandemic, cancer treatment, children in crisis) this week has taken us to the Oregon coast (my choice, as I love the ocean which is the closest thing I'm going to get to Lake Michigan) or up Mt. Hood along a river (Rob's choice, as he's not a beach fan). The past four years or so we've stayed in the mountains, as it provides both water (necessary to me) and woods (necessary to him). For a few years, we took Mr. Bill, our geriatric dog, and for most of the summers it was a distraction from the terror of having J. 2,000 miles away. And now that I don't have six or seven mandated weekends in a hotel or rented house due to traveling with J, ...

 After a 7 hour recording session, performance season has ended. Since the end of April, I've been in back to back opera and choir performances, on top of work stuff, on top of general life stuff, and then last weekend the academic year ended and so did performance season and for the past three days I have been unregulated. It doesn't help that I'm also having my period, which at 49 is both insulting and also deeply unpredictable. After almost 2 decades of barely any period (thanks, birth control, eating disorder and working out too much), it's like I'm 15 again. Anyway. My anxiety ahs been growing steadily since I woke up Monday morning and suddenly had nothing in front of me but a long summer, mostly empty work days, and for the first time since J graduated high school, he's not at home. He's happy--at his apartment, taking online summer courses, not working yet, but I'm unmoored. this is also the time of year that, between 2014 and 2022, was the worst...

 For most of my life, I have been obsessed (either consciously, or subconsciously) with being as small as possible. My mother--daughter of a woman the size of a bird--paid particular attention to the bodies of her daughters. It's not that we were encouraged to be beautiful--that was a thing for other people, it seemed, not us--but we were encouraged to be small. I've read about mothers who were on all sorts of fad diets, but that wasn't my mom--our house was full of junk food: doritos and miracle whip and chips ahoy. In fact, if you ask her about healthy foods she'll say they are disgusting. Tofu? gross. Vegetables? not for her. But she says, even now well into her 70s, that she is never hungry. As a child i remember her breakfast being a Marlboro Light and a Pepsi. She chain smoked well into her 70s, after my dad was diagnosed with heart failure and he stopped drinking and smoking, after my dad died at 72, and after she was diagnosed with macular degeneration, glaucoma...