Virgin-Blogger-No-Longer!

Here I sit staring out my window on Thursday afternoon, Suzanne by my side teaching me how to "blog" my life! But where to begin, is what I'm wondering, secretly---who am I speaking to really? What "people" am I to imagine are reading these words? I have written words all of my life. (I'll be 55 in a few days!) I have hundreds of journals on the shelves behind me. And yet, this process terrifies me---who am I speaking to? Does it matter if I know? What do I want to share---all I can think of at this nervous moment are the words I wrote last night at about two in the morning. (Much of my writing is done at that time as I'm a hopeless insomniac.) So here is what I wrote before goin to sleep the morning before the morning that I was and am writing my very first blog---to you whoever you are!---gracias...

A spider comes, fat, black, and fast out of the darkness, and scuttles down my comforter. I leap! On the verge of sleep, I let him chase me out of my bed. Still in darkness, and trying not to disturb my husband, gathering my gear I leave both the spider and spouse to sleep in the abandoned room downstairs. The child's old room, room of the girl who's gone forever, having been abducted by the woman who lived with her all along, from the day of her birth until the day she left for college. There are no spiders that I can see here in this room, just bears on the walls - posters of polars, a stencil of a swallow in mid-flight, a sky blue whale stuffie, a hippopotamus, a moose, and a duck stuffie, too. And baby books, "Pat the Bunny," "The Very Bumpy Bus Ride," and of course, Dr. Seuss. Finger puppets, a wind-up metal clown on a scooter, a music box and Star Wars figurines, a glass globe with a lily-white angel in the middle, and underneath the gone daughter's pillow, the straggly remains of what was once her favorite blanket, the rag she still holds when she comes home for a visit and sleeps in this, her old bed. But now, as on most days, it stays buried in its cushiony cave like all the memories of daughter that are stowed away in this room waiting for -- I no longer know what. Will the little girl ever come laughing back to our house? No, the little girl won't come back, but a young woman will. One whom I love and admire. I have run from the spider as if to protect myself. There is no way to protect oneself this time.