It has been 14 days since my last post. In those two weeks, so many things have happened -- and they have been at so many places on the emotional map -- that I have no idea how I am feeling about anything at any given moment.

Some (by no means all) of the things that have happened (in no particular order, because putting things in order is laughably far beyond my capacity at the moment):

I got a letter from the South Pacific telling me that Emily has passed away at age 101. I lived with Emily in her old and rambling house by the sea for a year when the boys and I were in the Cook Islands. We used to sit, Emily and I, on the shady veranda in the afternoons and watch my boys playing in the dappled sunlight of the garden and talk about many things -- long conversations that meandered like butterflies in and out of time and memory and places in the languid Polynesian air. The night I left to come back to the US, she put her arms around me and held me for a while. "I am your mother," she said into my hair. "Don't ever forget that I am your mother."

My actual biological mother, a few days after I got the letter about Emily, was pushed down a flight of concrete stairs by the man she had been having an affair with and whom she married just weeks after my father's death two years ago. The saga of the past two years has involved so many crazy Southern stereotypes -- double-wides, buzzards, shotguns, defrocked evangelical ministers, handgun-toting ex-wives lurking in WalMart parking lots, possums, indoor-outdoor carpet, snake oil sellers, deep-fried catfish -- that it would be literally incredible to me if I heard it any other way than first hand. It got to the point that when my mother was telling me about her plans to have semen injected into her back in the abandoned JC Penney store out at the mall (now converted into some sort of fly-by-night, off-grid "medical" clinic), I didn't even blink. Later it turned out that she wasn't saying "semen" -- she was saying "cement" with a heavy Arkansas accent. Better, I guess, but still... Anyway, she's in the hospital and my brother and I are heading there in a doomed attempt to see if there is anything we can do. 

Simultaneously (as in the very same day), I found out that my new book manuscript has passed review and will -- fingers crossed, there is still some work to do -- be coming out in Spring 2023 from a really great press. Yea! This amazes me and I am sure there has been some mistake, but I am hoping to lay low so that it is not discovered. Aiden says, "I would expect nothing less from you."

I also finished everything from my last class ever at Colorado College, turned in my last final grades ever, advised my last students ever, and have nothing left to do now but attend my retirement party (tomorrow) and turn in my keys. The sadness of leaving this part of my life has been very neatly balanced by the exquisite joy of realizing that the last few onerous administrative tasks, meetings, assessment reports, etc. are the last. It is impossible, examining my moods, to know from moment to moment whether nostalgic melancholy or sheer fucking relief dominates.

And eleven days ago, I watched my littlest baby graduate from university. Sitting there in the audience, I thought my heart would burst from pride and love. And also, frankly, from relief. And, it must be said, from nostalgia, too. I remember when I used to have to bend down in order to hold his hand. I remember when his hand felt so small in mine.

There is more that has happened in these last 14 days, but those are some of the emotional roller-coaster highlights that are happening while I live here surrounded by boxes and packing tape and trash bags and dust. Right now, Jonathan is six feet away from me trying on many pairs of old trousers from the back of his closet to see if they still fit. He is wearing his "Nachos in Space" underwear while doing this. So at least for this one moment, I am purely, absolutely, uncomplicatedly happy.