A Great Many Things

  “All the good words have left my mouth / I’m completely out of things to say about it now.”  When the song “Halloween” by Novo Amor popped up on a Spotify playlist several weeks ago and those two lines opened the song, I turned the volume up. It’s not a song about having writer’s block after losing a parent, but it might as well have been. “That’s it,” I thought. “All the good words have left my mouth. I’m completely out of things to say about it now.” And I am. I don’t know where my good words have gone, but they’re certainly not here. I wish that I could write something achingly beautiful, a graceful, poignant tribute to my mother, but I can’t. I so very much want to give her something beautiful, but all of my good words are scattered and what’s left just sounds like tin rattling around in my mouth.  A perceptive friend once observed, “You process trauma through writing, don’t you?” Until he recognized and identified this aspect of my writing, I’d honestly not reali...

Somebody told me once that divorce is trading one set of problems for another. As much as I’d like it to be a melodramatic overgeneralization, it’s true. It’s up to the individual to make the determination about which set of problems he or she would like to have, but the statement holds true nonetheless.  I was prepared for what came with the set of problems I chose - the emotional angst, the attorney bills, the process of buying a house on my own, the act of furnishing said house, readjusting to a new, less comfortable (in some ways but not others) normal.  I was not prepared to face the first stomach bug alone.  I knew it was coming. Last Monday, I even mentioned to a co-worker that I thought I’d be called by daycare before the end of the day because something seemed “off” with Eli’s tummy - nothing to keep him home yet, but mother’s intuition had me on alert. Despite my misgivings, Monday’s school day passed like any other. I got the kids home, fed, bathed, and put to ...