Three months of silence. More like four. No explanations. Just *poof* and this site went silent.
Breaking the cardinal rule of blogging: Thou shalt not cease to blog less your hands fall off and your toes lose their dexterity.
Tempt the gods and thou shalt lose all subscribers and BlogHer Ads will begin to ask, "Why do we advertise on a stale site that is getting less than 100 hits a day, again?"
Yet, I shook my fist at the blogging heavens and dared shout, "I need to live an inarticulate life for a minute! Feedburner be damned!"
A death defying act for a blogger.
Yet I needed to breathe some life back into my life there.
And I needed to catch my breath because it had been knocked right out of me.
~~~
November.
After almost exactly two years of living in my parents' guest house, rebuilding our lives from the post-Katrina foundation up, we stumbled across a little house with our name on it. By the grace of God's long finger that was Katrina insurance claims, we happened to have a savings account big enough with our name on it, as well, and decided to buy that house.
Welcome to the whirlwind. My life is defined by the winds.
We found the house on a Saturday night, on the way home from a family pizza night in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. A fluke, we took one street home differently, mere blocks from my parents' home. A "For Sale" sign that couldn't have been there more than a couple of days made us stop. With nothing more than moonlight to illuminate the house, I stepped into the backyard.
I exhaled.
I did not realize I had been holding my breath.
For how long had I been holding my breath?
Years.
Death defying. Hope.
We made an offer on the house less than 24 hours later. Two offers later and we have the house within hours of first seeing it.
The wind howls under the eaves of our new bedroom window.
Had I known that, I could not have negotiated so fearlessly.
Death defying. Courage.
We need a mortgage.
Time to reopen my eBay store. Welcome to online holiday sales hell. Where's the coffee in this joint?
~~~
December.
Work. Work. Work.
The United States Post Office is my best friend and my worst enemy.
The eBay logo is beginning to make me nauseous. However, for some reason, the eBay logo makes our mortgage company happy and we get the loan.
Time to celebrate. My birthday is December 16. I'm 31. Is that right? When did that happen?
The morning of the 16th and the boys go out to buy me a present because, hey, who knew it was my birthday? Anxiously anticipating the glorious choices Pants and Goose are sure to make at Big Lots (holla!), I wait on the couch with a cup of coffee. My eBay store will be closed in a couple of days so as to ensure timely holiday package delivery and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The light at the end of another tunnel has been extinguished. As I wait for my gifts, my mother walks into the guest house to tell me that our friend has killed himself only hours before.
Death defying. No, not after all.
A friend. A brother. A son. A father to a son only months older than Pants.
When I was pregnant with Pants, we used to visit from New Orleans and our friend used to bring his baby boy over so that I could just hold a baby, damn it! The patience of a pregnant first time mother is thin when it comes to touching the soft reward of baby skin.
Now that baby boy has lost his father. His mother has been absent for years, more or less. The family asks if I will keep that baby boy while they try to make sense of this sudden void.
He is three. He does not know nor understand.
So we play. What else can we do?
Death defying. Faith.
I fear every day that he will ask about his dad. Every time Pants or Goose talk about their own dad, my stomach drops and I look at this baby boy whose father let me hold him, horde him, while I waited for my own baby boy. While I felt my own growing boy kick this loving young father's son as he squashed my straining belly under his delicious baby weight.
Death defying. Love.
The weeks pass. The computer falls away, literally and figuratively.
~~~
January.
We are home.
That baby boy, that father's son, is gone now. His mother has whisked him away. Justice must be blind, after all.
I inhale my own life. And the days pass.
Death defying. Fortitude.
~~~
February.
No television. No internet.
Words that have not crossed my mind in months:
Stats.
Feed count.
Technorati.
Social networking.
Rank.
Meme.
Google.
Links.
Incoming.
Death defying. Silence.
~~~
March.
Life is green.
The soles of my sons' feet are dirty. Their faces are smeared. Their smiles are clear.
There are birds in our yard. We welcome them, feed them, beg them to fear not. We will provide.
I turn the computer back on. But only for a moment. My priorities are different. My needs are different. My goals are different.
Yet I can't help but notice that there are birds of a different feather in my computer. Looking. Pecking at the piles of debris. Wondering if anyone lives here now, after all this time. If anyone will provide.
I am home again. I will provide.
But life is green. And I have lavender, rosemary, ivy, and a Bottlebrush tree to plant today.
Death defying. Life.
...........................
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Writer. Mother.
