October

I want to be so careful with October and the months that follow. Having found the thing I was waiting for, I have to treat it differently. It's like when the cat does something really adorable and you're caught between "I want to go grab my camera but if I move she's going to change position." Or, a more appropriate analogy, caring for an orchid. Orchids require special soil and a certain light and juuuuuust so much water* and a lot of patience, and the payoff is breathtaking.

Breath taking away is actually a good way to describe all of October. At the beginning, it was the mad rush to the big event at work and I was done with being calm and had moved on to a morning prayer that consisted of: "Dear God, please help me remember to breathe today and to be nice and not yell a lot so that I may be of better service to others, amen." The gala came and went and everyone says it was a great success and I believe them, because I was there, but I don't remember much from the actual evening.

(Breathe, Mary)

And after, a long nap? Not hardly; work remained a mad dash and has sustained that pace through all of quarter 1. In the middle of it, Josh came back and stayed with me for a week while conducting some work in Houston. That initial connection sustained across time zones was already starting to take deeper roots; it was real and immediate and here in person in front of me: living and working and loving and making plans and delivering my lunch to the office on a busy day when I forgot to bring it.

(Breathe)

It rained in October. The first time all summer, it seemed. Two weeks later, the city was hit with a massive mosquito attack the likes of which I had never experienced before. Thick clouds of mosquitoes hovered on the back deck waiting for a warm victim. Despite our collective best efforts, they got inside the houses, the restaurants, stores, offices, cars--the mosquitoes were everywhere and making up for lost time. Cause (rain) and effect (mosquitoes).

Josh had to leave, of course, but not before I bought a ticket to visit for Thanksgiving. The cost of my ticket with airline miles: $5. The thought of that visit sustained me through the mosquito swatting, through multi-hour calls on Pacific time, through the nights I went to sleep and woke up alone, and into the morning prayer: Lord, whatever your end may be, accept my amazement.** 

And in a twist none of us would have seen coming in April, it was back to California for the second time in 2011. 

*Unless it is a really high-quality fake, in which case, do not water it.

**John Berryman, "Eleven Addresses"