Trying to stay in the present. Trying to find myself in any of the present. Trying to be present in the present. The reason for writing. For recognizing what you are thinking. If you can catch it in words you can hear it.

It all passes like the water between your fingers cliche. The minutes the hours. The days the weeks the months and then its another new year. And we try again to make the time useful to not squander. To analysis what is squandering. I remember waiting under the baby grand in the living room for my cousin to come. The only recognizable fine thing we owned. Sunday dinner. Arriving at two – and the time between noon, after Mass, and two. The equivalent of stretches so vast no month is half as long now.

My friend is visiting while my husband is camping. We talk about politics and  whether the country is retrievable. Whether there is a comeback possible from this place that’s unrecognizable. I notice how white and grey and silver her hair is still so thick. I remember it long to her waist and yellow and white and a kind of dull gold and so much like a shawl the way it draped. Mine was shiny and black. We talk about religion and growing up in two very different faith communities and how they overlapped and where organized religion goes from here. And I wonder while we talk if there is anything left that is meaningful that we have to contribute and I think again about what contributing looks like and how it is I can be 70 and not know what I do and don’t have to offer, and whether its selfish if I want to be done offering.

I am grateful its summer and the light is still there late at night. I’d never be in any other season if I could arrange it.