Yesterday morning I rushed home from Portland (E. B. White did win, by the way; my predictions were correct!) and then rushed off to a high school track meet, which was eventually canceled because of torrential thunderstorms, and then rushed home (sodden) to make dinner, and then rushed through a nerve-wracking sewing project (which came out beautifully, I'm relieved to say), and then finally stopped rushing, all of which explains why I did not write to you yesterday.

In contrast to yesterday's flurry, this morning I woke up to discover that Tom had forgotten to buy coffee and that Ruckus had left a dead mouse on the living room rug. Then I managed to open a door into my head, and now I feel a lumpy bruise ripening under my left eyebrow.

Today will be the day that my older son catches a plane to France. He is so happy. I do not want to distract him by growing a giant black bruise under my left eyebrow. I would prefer to have him remember me as the mother who swiftly transformed his favorite worn-and-torn Goodwill paisley shirt into a handsome short-sleeved shirt suitable for cafe and boulevard wear.



Blue in Green

Dawn Potter

Talk about art being its own worst

story: once I made the mistake

of playing Kind of Blue to snare

a baby into slumber.

Compare the crime

to those water-green lilies that teachers

Scotch-tape over the reading corner.

Now picture Monet shuffling the hallways

among our fluorescent children.

He would die of remorse. Meanwhile,

I knifed Miles for the sake of an hour’s

enchanted sleep. Who knew how soon

that breathing baby would light out

screaming into the blue?

[from Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014)]