Who would have dreamed that I could reach new pits of darkness at my advanced age? A gal like me doesn’t even need death or destruction to set her off. Just garden variety loss: of structure and direction. Of friendship. Of objectives. Of sense of belonging. Of strength. I just don’t have enough bootstraps. Or rocks. What Dad used to call “that characteristic Ginna resolve” is below empty, with no filling station still in business. […]
Read moreMonth: November 2010
Ember Virginia
I am in a state of deep emotion. My daughter and my son-in-law have finished naming their baby. They just came into my office to tell me the news. Her full name is Ember Virginia Redwine. I am beside myself like you wouldn’t believe. You’d think no one had ever been named after anyone before. For something that happens all the time, it is an earthshaking honor. And as if it weren’t enough to have […]
Read moreShredder
This afternoon I was lying on my bed, in the same pajamas I’ve worn for three days now, baby Ember peacefully asleep on my chest, when I realized suddenly what I had to do. Right away. I lifted floppy Emmy and handed her to her mother, and descended immediately into the basement. In dark corners dwell scores of teetering boxes: camping gear, baby clothes, reels of quarter-inch audio tape, framed paintings, thirty years of tax […]
Read moreNo Words
It’s all been said so many stupid ways so many boring times. Maybe I won’t even write any more about the festering bag of clotted grief I’ve become during every waking and many sleeping moments. I’ll let this painting by David Pearson capture my spirit. The illustration is from the Penguin Great Loves edition of Tolstoy’s Kruetzer Sonata, which is about sexual abstinence, jealous rage and resulting murder. Now, Tolstoy: there was a guy who […]
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