Humbly, after a long absence, I ask you to join me. Again.

Everything is changed and all is well.  I disappeared for a long, long time– there are several draft blog posts saved but unfinished in my WordPress drafts file.  There are no posts about what my daughter rightly refers to as “my amazing Bat Mitzvah” which happened in November 2014 and which moved me so deeply.  There are no posts about so many things, but they happened without writing about them.

I was gone from writing for a reason and now I return, unsure of whether I will come back to this blogging regularly or not, but happy to be here now.  Along with this writing– I have returned to other things I love to do, to places and to people with great enthusiasm and relief.  I finished the job I’ve had working for an elected official who lost reelection after many terms in office.  I was there for three years.  I walked out the door at 3 p.m. on December 31 having tried to tell a beautiful, warm, funny man who is the security guard there– what a difference he made to me, very single day.  I got in my car and came home on New Year’s Eve as I had been coming home every night– but I was different– changed.  The job had about a million things to recommend it and I did such interesting, important work there.  But so much was overshadowed by the challenge of an angry, unpredictable boss.  It was often a job that felt as though it would eat me alive, depressed me, made me weep at the distance it imposed between my family and friends and me.  But I prevailed.  I didn’t quit in despair, I didn’t get fired, I made friends, I got a lot done and I finished– triumphant.

I started 2015– the secular new year– fresh.  So much has changed in the three years I spent lost in my office and in fears and worries.  The three closest young people in my life are four years apart in descending order– and in these three years each has avanced to the end of some part of their education.  Nephew I-man will graduate from college, nephew J-J will graduate from high school and my own little girl, now not a little girl in any way whatsoever, except in my memory,  will graduate from 8th grade and will start high school in 2015.  We don’t yet know where she will attend high school but her tight and interesting 8th grade group will be dispersed from one another which makes her and makes me sad.

I start a new job in a little more than a week.  I’m excited about almost everything about the job– the respectful process that led to my getting the job; my soon-to-be and very thoughtful female boss, and the work itself.  I also get to think fresh about this next chapter in my life. How will writing and art and poetry figure into this next period?  I’ve spent the weeks since my job ended mostly trying to think about and experiment with how to retool a relationship with my daughter who is now a teenager and resuming responsibility in the household that I had left increasingly to M.  I have also sought to take on the issue of my health and well-being and have been pushing myself hard– to go to the gym 3 or 4 times each week.

I think about this time warp in so many ways.  The rest of my life.  Fast forward to the different job of parenting a teen.  People have gotten sick and died during this time, people in my life have gotten sick and lived and thrived.  I feel happy to be alive, going to the gym, drinking decaf cappucino most days, greeting my daughter after school most days,  and lucky that you are reading this.