P arrived last night, and this afternoon we'll embark for the north country--first stop Wellington, to hang out with homeland dear ones; then tomorrow we'll teach together in Monson. I'm ready to get back into the classroom, though after yesterday's zoom meeting I'm also breathless about the prep that still needs to get done before that Florida residency. Yes, I wrote eight poems over the course of a week, but more must be written, and when will I have time to produce another rush of work?

There's no point in fretting about that today, however. I'm looking forward to hanging out with my kid this morning, looking forward to hanging out with our friends this evening, looking forward to class tomorrow. I know I've said it before, but team-teaching with my own son is extraordinarily gratifying. This will be our third iteration of the playwriting session; and though we (mostly he) tweak our plans and packet every year, we've honed a class that surprises the kids, engages them, and keeps them adventurous. P is a great natural teacher, and I hope he gets a chance to have his own classroom one of these days.

It's Monday morning, it's my back-to-work week, and I am starting it off right, with a pile of dirty sheets and towels and a washing machine that does not leak water all over the basement. Yesterday Tom discovered pinholes in the drain hose, made a quick trip to the hardware store, and voila: I am back in the laundry business. So today--a walk, a zoom meeting, housework, groceries, prepping for school, getting the guest room set up, and this evening P will arrive from Brooklyn, ready to trek north with me tomorrow.

I did end up watching the Bills-Jaguars game yesterday--a game so stressful that I had to keep walking out of the room. Midway through, P texted, "This is a rock fight," and he was right. I never like to watch anyone get hurt, but I especially hate to watch the Bills' quarterback get beat up. I think that's because I've been on his side since he was an awkward, full-of-talent, often-ridiculed, dingbat rookie, and that history has somehow triggered my motherliness. Even though he's now the reigning league MVP, seeing him get hit on the football field feels as upsetting as seeing my kids' friends get mashed during a high school soccer game.

In the end, the Bills did pull off a victory, though I wonder why I was happy because now I have to go through all that stress again next Sunday.

Otherwise, what is new? Mostly an awareness of transition. This week I'll pivot away from my private life, back into the world. I haven't been exactly housebound over the past couple of weeks, but the house and my own mind have certainly been my frame. I'm looking forward to what's next.

Chuck has been unable to let me sleep late. Before 5 a.m., both yesterday and today, he was sitting on my chest, patting my face with his paw and trying to lick my eyelids. Who can stay asleep with a cat licking their eyelids? Ugh.

However, I otherwise got a good night's sleep, so I will refrain from grouching at the enthusiast. He means well.

T and I had an enjoyable playday yesterday. The weather was weirdly warm, more like March than January, and we walked around town with our hats off, held hands as we slid over the icy patches, embarrassed ourselves with dreadful bowling scores, and dolled up for dinner. It was an excellent birthday party.

Now today we will return to the land of chores. He will argue with the still-leaking washing machine. I will work on some editing questions with an author. I plan to watch the Bills game this afternoon, unless it becomes too depressing. I'll probably keep reading Toibin's The Magician, though I have to say I'm not liking it as much as I've liked his other fiction.

This week the work snowball will start rolling downhill. First thing tomorrow morning I've got a zoom meeting about the conference faculty performance. In the evening my younger son will arrive from New York, and on Tuesday he and I will head north so that we can teach the Monson high schoolers together on Wednesday. At some point during the week a new editing project will arrive. The days will speed up, and the responsibilities will stack up, and I will be breathless and spinning, wondering if I'll ever write again.

So my production over this holiday hiatus has been a great boon. During this break I wrote eight new poems . . . eight! I also drafted the bulk of my conference teaching plans: brand-new conversation starters and prompts designed to fill full-day sessions--a lot of material. I worked on marketing stuff, I worked on upcoming online teaching stuff, I worked on co-teaching stuff with my son, I read books like a fiend. I solved (I hope) some niggling medical issues. I celebrated a big elaborate Christmas. I hosted a New Year's Eve party. I was a good pal to Tom. I kept the house clean and got interesting meals onto the table. I look back at the past month and I am amazed. What the heck?

I'm not sure why I've been able to buckle down so effectively in my private life, given the bombardment of national horrors. There's been no compartmentalizing: the horrors seep like spilled ink into my worries, into my dreams. I am 61 years old and my brain is sparking with energy and my chest is tight with distress, but I keep waking up, I keep getting to work. I don't know why or how.

Yesterday I officially joined the ranks of the old: for the first time in my life I am now on daily medication--a very low-dose blood pressure pill. I'm actually feeling pretty good about it, in a resigned sort of way. I've had some weird evanescent symptoms for a while, which the nurse practitioner believes are related to the blood pressure spikes. Apparently women in particular can be sensitive to such shifts. In the old days I used to have low blood pressure. I don't know why this has changed. T and I have the same diet, and his blood pressure is fine. I exercise regularly and don't have a significant weight problem. But bodies are strange things, and mine has decided to go a little haywire. I'm glad the problem is so easy to solve.

Today is Tom's 61st birthday, and we are having a play day. Later this morning we'll walk to Norimoto--a James Beard Award-winning Japanese-influenced bakery that happens to be up the street--and buy a few little treats for breakfast. This afternoon we'll drive over to West-Port Lanes and go bowling. And this evening we'll eat dinner downtown at the Wayside Tavern.

Tom and I met when we were 19. We've been a pair since we were 21. We got married at 26. We lived in the woods together for more than 20 years. We raised two babies into men. The Dawn and Tom Show has been running for a long, long time. How can I sing his praises? He is full of contradiction: thorny yet easygoing, ironic yet sweet, shy yet sociable; a domesticated loner: reliable, handy, and mysterious; an artist, an intellectual, a carpenter, a comic, a fierce opponent at card games, a cuddler of kittens; a guy who is willing to lie on his stomach in a puddle of water and peer into the bowels of a broken washing machine; a guy who leans his shoulder into mine at the movies, whose face lights up when he sees me across a room, because mine lights up when I see his. He is my good fortune.

It also happens to be the birthday of Hannah, our daughter-in-law-to-be: another stroke of luck. What a delight to have her in our lives--this funny, dear, smart, charming young woman who thinks our son is the cat's meow, and he thinks she is the cat's meow, and may they someday celebrate her 61st birthday together as gratefully as I'm celebrating Tom's today.

I've gotten a lot of reading done this week: finished the McMurtry novel, finished the Kushner novel, started Toibin's The Magician, plus made progress on Tennyson. I've also gotten a lot of planning work done: drafts for segments of the conference--the opening day and what has traditionally been my revision day, though it is morphing into something more malleable than straight revision practice. (Sometimes I write "re-vision" because the hyphen does help to indicate a more open process, though I admit it's annoyingly precious.)

Among other gifts, my work with high schoolers has been a laboratory. I try out new ideas, take notice of what's working and what isn't. Each cohort has a different vibe, and I try to adjust around that aura while also maintaining a steady focus on producing, discussing, revising, finishing, and performing work.

While I won't give away details, this year's re-vision segment at the conference will center around the power of comedy in collaborating, extending, and re-seeing drafts. What happens when you frame writing strategies around the goal of "make us laugh"? This year's high schoolers love to be silly together, and I've found that giving them that opportunity has been a way to get them to practice their skills in new contexts. For certain kids, it's also allowed them to sidestep their fears about sharing uncomfortable personal material and just relax into the work.

Most of the fall I felt like I was thrashing in shallow water as I tried to keep up with my obligations. But this hiatus between semesters has been everything I'd hoped it would be, work-wise at least. I've caught up on writing projects, I've caught up on teaching projects, I've caught up on reading projects, I've seen my beloveds, and I've gotten some rest.

Next week the whirlwind will start up again. I hope I'm ready. I guess I am. Who can tell?

It took me hours to fall asleep last night. I couldn't get the image of that murdered young woman out of my head; I couldn't quench my fury at those ICE thugs masquerading as law, or my fear for my own young people, who in their cities are doing the work that she was doing in hers. 

So I'm tired this morning. And I'm downhearted, to say the least. 2026 has had a hell of a start. Nonetheless, the clock ticks. The kettle steams. Outside, a few crows shift among the branches, and the tide laps at the pale marsh grass.

This morning I'll run a load of laundry and learn if T has solved the leak problem. This morning I'll lie back in a dentist's chair and let a stranger's hands probe my teeth. This morning I'll scratch away at class plans, at poem drafts, at the books I'm reading. Tonight I'll go out to write with my friends.

The future feels very fragile, very small.

It's snowing again this morning, another glossy inch muffling cars and gardens, streaking sidewalks and roofs.

Here at the Alcott House, we are struggling with yet another appliance malfunction--this time the washing machine, which is mysteriously leaking. As appliance problems go, things could be worse: the leak is in the basement, not upstairs, and there is a laundromat conveniently around the corner. And maybe this morning T will pinpoint the problem he couldn't figure out last night and discover he can fix it himself. Still, these household debacles are tiring, and apparently endless.

Yesterday I started serious work on plans for the summer conference. My first task, every year, is to choose my opening poems. At the Frost Place I always used a Robert Frost poem, for obvious reasons. He was the looming figure. But one of the changes I've made in Monson is to start the morning with two poems by very different poets that set the stage for the conference theme--in this case, transformation--and to then move directly into writing and sharing before we undergo any sort of analytical discussion. It's been refreshing to step away from Frost. Much as I admire his work he's never been a touchstone for me, and over the years the conversations around his work became more and more predictable. With two new poets every season, I never know exactly how participants will respond, and that's exciting.

So I sat upstairs in my blue chair with a stack of poetry books beside me and idly browsed, until, suddenly, the poems I needed rose up from the pages and began jostling against one another. It is a very unscientific process, this poem-choosing task. I thumb through collections and the poems murmur and bustle and then a moment arrives when I recognize the poems, and I feel the writing prompts emerge, and I still don't know any answers to my questions, and that is how I can tell the job is done.