By 11:30 p.m. I had given up any hope of making it home. Snow and ice had crippled Newark, with the threat of more on the way. My backs were packed and I was itching to give in to the hell that is travel. "If only they could beam me there," my mother used to say. And I agree, like some Star Trek technique, I could stand in my doorway and zoom, off to another. Another home, a place I can still call home, although I have lived in this old house in San Francisco for nearly the same amount of years.
But why do childhood years seem so much longer? They are epic in their sprawl and emotion. Christmas mornings, snow covered streets, summer nights thick with fire flies and skinned knees. And it is for this home that I ached to be. To be mothered when all I seem to do these days is mother others. To have a shoulder to lean against, to have someone who bakes an apple pie because she knows how much I love it.
My daughter, the iron butterfly that she usually is, fell victim to the clingy "you can't go" tears over her Cheerios yesterday morning. So here we had mothers and daughter, each missing the other, linked together like those beads on a string that knock eachother closer or farther away, depending on the force. And here I was in the middle, wishing I could keep both nestled against me.
To change the subject, my apologies from being absent from the online world. I've been writing in an self-imposed exile. Last night, as I reached out to my friends on Facebook to determine how bad bad was in NJ, did I realize how much I miss it. But one novel is done, another may be dusted off, and a short story is nearly complete, so there's something to share to make up for my negligence. Will post more about that very soon.
Love to all.