School daze

29 weeks left
24 weeks completed
3 weeks left until mid-tour leave
1 pound lost
27 pounds total
13 months until the wedding

There’s a park bench that is strategically located between my office and the campus coffee joint that is pretty much the perfect place for people to take a little afternoon break. It’s in the sun, but nestled in between some cooling juniper trees and surrounded by a couple small holly bushes (whoever the landscaper was definitely had a Christmas fixation of some sort, because that’s exactly what it smells like: Christmas, or you know, gin, which for some people probably also smells like Christmas.)

I walk by this bench pretty much daily in the fall as I try to get myself back into the going-to- school groove. After coming back from the summer hiatus, the trek from my office to the coffee shop for my mid-morning dose of high octane seems especially necessary for getting me going and refocused on the daily grind.

There is a man who takes his breaks on that bench each day, a very scholarly looking gentleman, who always brings with him something interesting to read and his cigar. (This usually only occurs in the early fall and late spring. The weather in the late fall, winter, and early spring here isn’t really conducive to outside breaks.) He sits there in the sun, reading his book and smoking his cigar with the most content look on his face. I have no idea where he works or who he is. I just know that pretty much every fall day he’s there as I go to get coffee.

Each day when I leave my office and get a whiff of that cigar, I know he’s sitting there enjoying his morning. I always smile as I walk by, which could be interpreted as friendliness if he ever looked up from his book. But he doesn’t. He is lost in thought, enjoying the warm sunshine on his face, and whatever it is he’s reading that day. And he has no idea that his daily routine brings me just a little bit of happiness.

As I leave the café with my java in hand, the combination of the smell of the coffee, the Christmas bushes, and his cigar mixes into an olfactory overload that will until my final days make me think of this job, school, the fall, and this gentleman.

Last week was the first week of school. Almost on cue, the temperature dropped 15 degrees during the daytime and plummeted to the its-almost-too-cold-to-keep-the-windows-open-at-night range once the sun went down. It was like Mother Nature was trying to help out moms and dads everywhere by allowing them to say “See kids. It’s chilly now. It’s jacket weather, not swimming pool weather. Summer’s over. It’s time to go back.” It’s undeniable: the weather says time for school to start.

I am blessed that as a teacher I do get most of my summers to myself in terms of specific, reporting-to-the-office hours. (And just to set the record straight for all those people who think that teachers have a “cake” job and get “three whole months off” each summer. This is not the case. Usually between in-services, figuring grades, writing curriculum, teaching summer school, going to professional development seminars, working on your classroom, and working towards your required master’s degree credits, your three months ends up at about 4 weeks…if you’re lucky…and you are able to actually turn your brain off and away from your school-year responsibilities for that long. And I’ve met few really good teachers who can do that. Just so you know.)

Anyway, I definitely do work in the summer, but most of it can be done with my laptop and some books at my leisure from wherever my heart desires. It’s not until the students actually come back that I’m required to be in my office all day each day. That started last Monday for me, right along with the cold front and, I am happy to say, cigar man.

I started to see kids this week. I didn’t realize how much I missed kids. I feel like things with my life, my job, my attitude, are much better when there are kids around than when I’m just working with the adults or just thinking abstractly about my work removed from the office and the context of what I do. The reason I got into this business to begin with is because I love kids. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at doing. It’s who I am. I*get* how kids work. I do not get how grown-ups work.

I’ve been so focused on getting a new job this summer that I think I forgot about the parts of this one that I truly love. I love working with students. Seeing them grow and change and mature. Helping them to figure out what’s next in their lives. I love teaching, helping them to discover new and interesting parts of themselves and pushing them to think about things they never have before. And I love helping them to see their strengths and how to capitalize on them.

And so school has begun again in earnest. I love the first couple weeks of school. I am busy. My students are excited. Fresh. All well-rested and tanned from the summer, optimistic and ready to take on the world. I love watching this. And I have a handful of new students whose stories I don’t know yet. I love getting to know them, hear what they are all about.

I have always loved school. I was the one *dying* to go back each fall. And the highlight when I little was always the week before, back-to- school shopping. Most kids got a haircut and some new jeans. I probably did too. But that’s not the part I remember. I remember the school supply list. Ever since I was young I have had a fascination with school supplies; folders and binders and fun paper and hip pens. I might be the only person alive who could be sweet-talked into doing just about anything with the offer of fashionable binder clips.

If I had been *exceedingly* cooperative on the shopping trip, I could generally talk my mom into a new Trapper Keeper each fall, which was OBVIOUSLY the pinnacle of the office supply buying experience. Man, did I love my Trappers. To this day, I still remember a particularly special one that was black and had a glittery rainbow splashed across the front. I was not only the hippest fourth grader around, I was also the most organized—hip and organized, a deadly combination for a fourth grader.

As I walked past cigar man today I smiled and realized that

somewhere in my life I’ve traded Trapper Keepers and new jeans in for coffee and cigar man as the signals that the school year has indeed come again. I didn’t even see it happen. Is this what growing up is about? Smells over smelly markers? (I do still love the smell of crayons and fresh construction paper, though.)

Maybe cigar man and Christmas bushes aren’t enough to really get the year going. I’m starting to think that the tonic for my ill-mood right now might just be a combination of the old and the new. Yes, I have coffee and my nameless, scholarly, smoker. But perhaps just as an extra measure I should take myself back to school shopping as well. Get some new jeans (to celebrate my weight loss…though stagnant it does currently seem) and a hip new way to organize my life. Setting my mind up for another school year here needs to happen, and it needs to happen soon. Cigar guy is back. And so am I.

Now then, does anyone still sell Trapper Keepers?

Absence

Today I was shopping for a greeting card for a friend of mine. This is never a speedy process for me. I always end up reading them all like a hundred times before I pick the winner (of course then I also usually end up buying five of the them just to “have around for later.”) As I was reading through the racks, (and racks and racks- thank goodness I got my cup of coffee BEFORE I went card shopping. I ended up needing actual sustenance for this little hour long project...) I came across this sepia-toned photo card with a cute little kid on the front dressed up in grown-up clothes, holding a balloon, looking off into the distance with a sad face (you know the card. I’m positive you’ve seen the picture before.) On the outside it said “I know that absence makes the heart grow fonder...” And on the inside, it wittily read, “But right now I’d be ok being a little less fond of you.”

This made me simultaneously chortle and cry (I’m the crazy lady who cries in card shops. It’s fine.) “Wishing I was less fond of you” could be the title of this week’s story, but its subtitle would definitely have to be “A watched pot never boils.” (I’m picturing it on a marquee at an old movie theater. My assumption is that no one would want to see this movie.)

J and I are nearing the halfway point in his deployment. Every person I have ever met who has gone through this says the same thing: There is a predictable rhythm to a deployment. There are peaks, and there are deep deep valleys in the passage of time. And, so I am told, they all pretty much hit everyone at the exact same times. Always wanting to believe that I don’t really fit a stereotype of any sort, I never really paid attention to this ebb-and-flow-of-deployment-time lore. It was all going to be FINE for me. Obviously.

Turns out this isn’t really the case. I’m feeling it just like everyone else does. On exactly the same timeline, and in exactly the same magnitude (me= not special at all.)

Even when I go back through this blog, the nature of my entries has changed as the deployment time has passed, just like folks said it would. (Yeah, I actually sat down the other day for the first time and read my writing here from start to finish. Wow. That was eye-opening.)

The first four weeks, plainly stated, quite simply sucked. That’s about it. I missed J every day. Everything I saw made me think of him. I was sad…and angry. And felt more than a little bit lost. And I spent my days trying to figure out what a J-less life looked like. At that point, we were still struggling to figure out how we were going to keep in touch, trying texts and calls at different times of the day, trying to find a pattern. (…and some spots where he could stand, you know, on one leg holding a goat and a coat hanger during cloudy weather on odd numbered hours so that we could get some phone service that didn’t make it sound like I was talking to Optimus Prime.)

And then we began to refine the art of sending forth into the capable hands of the US Postal Service letters and care packages, and counted the days between here and there (turns out, on average, it’s about 10 days, which all things considered is remarkable to me.) And some of this stuff worked, and some of it did not. But trying to establish those patterns, looking for some normalcy at least started to take my mind off of being scared and frustrated and *actively* missing him every day.

But let’s just say this- that first month, it was a hard way to live.

Then we sorta started to get into a groove. And the regular communication became exciting. My heart still leapt when I heard the phone ring. And we were each doing new stuff without the other one, so we were dying to relay every last detail, just like if we were sitting in the same room. There’s new stuff to talk about, and we tried desperately to keep it as close as we could to our same ol’ relationship. This, sadly, doesn’t really work. Because you’ve only got about three minutes at a time to chat instead of hours. And at least for J and me, who function primarily on complex conversations picking on one another using ridiculous puns, clever word-play and playful banter, well, that’s hard to do on a three minute phone call with a three second time delay. Hearing his joke a minute after he tells it makes it less funny. (Let me be clear. He is not normally funny. I am not admitting that he is funny.)

And then, somewhere after that (say, three-four months in?) well then, it all just becomes life. In the words of J, it becomes Groundhog Day, each day an exact replica of the day before. Nothing new to share. Nothing new to say. Conversations become a little shorter just simply because there is nothing interesting to report, or at least nothing important enough that you feel it necessary to take up the short time you have by relaying it. Some of the details of life start to get lost. And your new overseas telephone relationship of three minute snip-its of life, ends up hitting just the highlight reel. “What did you do today?” “Not much. Up early. Went for a run. Went to work. Did some stuff. Same things.” These were what I referred to as my Pinky and the Brain days (“What do you want to do today, Brain?” “The same thing we do every day…try to take over the world.”)

This time was sort of emotionless for me. He had been gone long enough to not be actively sad every.single.day. We had established enough of a pattern for me to not be actively worried about him every.single.day. There was nothing new to talk about. And I just sorta got lost in my daily routine. In fact, the emotion I felt most at this time was guilt…guilt that I WASN’T sad and worried 24/ 7, guilt that I was carrying on with life as normal here, and guilt that I couldn’t come up with more to say when we talked (for those who know me, me at a loss for words is quite an event.) I had come to a mental place of just dealing with it; resignation to the distance.

But next in the cycle comes the blissful anticipation of the mid-tour leave. And every day becomes talk about what you will do when you see each other next. The places you’ll go. The activities you’ll try to jam into the little time you have to share. Planning and something new to talk about! This is a fun time. Add to that that J’s mid-tour leave for us is going to do with WEDDING planning, and well! I’ve clearly been abuzz with excitement about the leave.

UNTIL…just about now.

Now, well, now we wait. And even though as I look at a calendar I see that in less than a month (more like three weeks, actually) I will see J again with my own eyes on our own soil, it seems an utter lifetime away. I’m not even excited or anxious anymore. I’m actively pissed at time for choosing to suddenly come to a screeching halt. What’s a girl gotta do to speed things up? A watched pot may never boil, but I’m sure about to.

If one more person asks me if I’m excited to see J, I might scream. (What am I going to say to that? No thanks. Not interested. Thanks for asking but I’m just fine not actually laying eyes on him because he’s really not that nice to look at anyway? Come on, people. Think first.) If one more person engages me in a conversation about how I’m going to see J SOO soon, and how it must be nice to have the waiting over and how fast this six months has gone, I’m gonna straight punch *those* guys. Because it’s NOT soon. The waiting is NOT over. And this six months has been the LONGEST of my life. And better yet, we still have six more to go!

My military friends are laughing at me. Because this is the exact timeline…the exact schedule, the exact ebb and flow of emotions that they told me to expect while he was gone. Ok. You win seasoned vets. You win. This is the time in the deployment that I feel like I’m at the absence-making-me-fonder threshold (I’m sure it’s even worse for the actual people serving the time. This is probably why they give out mid-tour leaves. Good work, Army psychologists. And thank you.)

I suppose the good news is that if I wasn’t so damned fond of J to begin with, I wouldn’t care so much about seeing him again. So, that’s saying something, yes? But in the meantime, if you come across me in the next couple of weeks and I seem a little on edge, I apologize. I guess you could say that I’m just busy being very fond of my fiancé.

Sound of Silence

30 weeks left
23 weeks completed
4 weeks left until mid-tour leave…ONE MONTH until I see J…no words.
1 Pounds lost
26 pounds total
13 months until the wedding

While I’m not interested in (carbon) dating myself here, I will admit that I was born basically in between generations. I’m not a Baby Boomer. I’m not a Generation Y-er .I’m not a flower child or a hippie. I’m neither the Young Urban Professional nor the Young Upwardly-Mobile Professional that would make me a Yuppie of the 1980’s. People who spend their time classifying such things would put me at the very very very earliest date of the Generation X-ers, though in practical conversation, no one would ever describe me as such.

I sort of think of myself as a tweener. I grew up with four television channels that came from an antenna on the roof, and we really didn’t watch it very much (the tv, not the antenna.) My high school got it’s very fist EVER computer (ah, the old Green-screened Apples) when I was a senior. I went jogging with a walkman that played cassettes and had big bright orange foam headphones that rested on the outside of the ear...and that’s when I wasn’t inside playing my records.

I’m not going to go on and on about how old I am (because come on, that’s no fun really- and if you really want to go down that path, I’m certain you can find yourself one of those mass emails entitled “You know you’re a child of the 70’s/80’s if…” to relish and relive the glory days.) Besides I don’t feel like an old lady. And additionally, I’m in that fantastic age bracket where I probably cannot refer to myself seriously as “young” anymore, but I’m also not so old that I’m tragically unhip to my students (which is awesome, because I can bring up things like Jersey Shore with them and they both dig that I know what that is and are slightly embarrassed for me when I try to talk about it. I’m in the “embarrassing the kids” bracket. LOVE it.)

But I have to say, as a teacher, I am actively aware of the way that students are changing. The way they learn…the way they process information…the way they listen. They are most decidedly the children of technology. They must have their cell phones. And their ipods. And their texting. And their non-stop stimulus. And I used to get angry and think that it was simply lack of manners or concentration that was keeping them tethered to all this extra outside stimuli.

But the truth is (and I’ve read some really interesting research about this) kids who have grown up always having 100 channels of television, and portable music and access to the internet with instantly available unlimited information are actually, chemically, physiologically wired differently in the brain than the generations before. It’s not that they just want all this crazy tech stuff. It’s that they need it. (True story, when I told my students they couldn’t have phones in the room during a test once, one student, with a very serious and concerned face asked “But then how I will know what time it is?” When I pointed to the wall clock and offered to take my watch off for him to use instead of the phone’s digital display, he stared back at me, expressionless, saying nothing. I realized that he couldn’t tell time from an actual clock-with-hands.)

Now I will openly admit, that being a self-proclaimed tweener, and a musician, and having a titch of the ol’ ADD myself, I like when there are things going on around me. I don’t always need texting and computing and phoning and interneting. But I do need noise. If I have to really really focus to write something scholarly, I’m probably sitting in a busy public place, ingesting caffeine like it’s my job, while paying attention to everyone around me and listening to heavy metal or loud alternative music in my headphones. Somehow, when all that other “noise” is happening, that’s when my mind clears, and I can tackle the task at hand. I’m not sure if that’s how it works for this new Generation Next, but that’s how it works for me. (In a related story, Seether, Breaking Benjamin and Linkin Park are primarily responsible for my completed dissertation.)

It’s hard for me to be in my house without having the TV on. I’m probably not actually watching it, but I need the white noise. It is virtually impossible for me to exercise without headphones (I mean, serious exercising. I can take a lap around the parking lot to smell the flowers, but if I’m walking/ jogging/ running for cardio, no way I can do it without tunes.) And it is a rare day when I can drive in my car without music to sing along to, or NPR, or a book on CD.

Today, however, was that rare day.

I was making a bit of a tenuous drive, through some bad weather on a busy interstate, through some pretty curvy hilly roads. The radio wasn’t coming in so well (ah, dated myself again…or perhaps I’ve just dated my vehicle. No satellite radio for me. I rely on the old school antenna kind.) And so, for what had to be the first time in forever, as I was trying to concentrate on the drive, instead of turning up the white noise, I turned off the music. Silence. Just me, the hum of the engine and the pounding of the rain on the hood of my car for three whole hours. Deafeningly still, and surprisingly beautiful.

As the rain let up, I reached down to turn the radio back on, and then decided against it. Silence. It struck me that the reason it felt so completely thick and foreign was because silence in today’s world is an endangered species. It’s like Darwin has said, “Nope, noise wins. We need stimuli from the outside to keep this new generation going. Sorry silence, you’re the weakest link. Goodbye.”

I would ask you this: When’s the last time you took time to sit in complete silence? To revel in being able to hear your own heartbeat…or a cricket outside chirp…or a wall clock tick (does anyone still have wall clocks? I have three in my house.) It was almost a meditative state I was in today for the three hours I drove in perfect silence. My thoughts were not cluttered. My heart was light. I spent time marveling at the spectacle that was the cloud formations moving and growing and changing colors in the setting sun.

There’s a reason the phrase is “peace and quiet.” In the quiet tonight, I found some much needed peace.

Of course, as always, I had song lyrics floating in and out of my head during this time of reflection. Simon and Garfunkel (who quite honestly make the best traveling companions one could ever ask for in pretty much any situation) repeating this simple lyric: “People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening…” Truer words could not have been spoken to me in that moment (though totally out of the context of the song…but we’ll let that one slide for now.)

I wonder if this generation or the generations to come will appreciate the sound of silence, the moments of quiet clarity that come from turning everything else in the world off for just a minute. I think that I had forgotten the power of silence in my life. But I’m thankful that I had this time to reconnect with nothingness. As I watched the incredible sunset that always comes after a major storm, Crayola Brick Red and Atomic Tangerine and Burnt Sienna and Violent Violet smeared across the sky in front of the setting globe of fire behind it, I had to smile. In this particular instance, silence was quite literally, golden.

Reverie

My high school yearbook was called “Reverie.” Because of that, I think I’ve always thought that the word reverie had something to do with memories…something to do with reminiscing (yet another example of the miseducation of my youth.) And it was always tinged, as memories often are, with just a bit of sadness in my mind. Reverie always meant per my definition “remembering fondly and longingly for something in the past” (which is kind of ironic since nothing that happened to me in high school or that was printed in that yearbook can be described as either remembered fondly or longed for. But that’s not my point here today. )

All these years when I heard songs use the word “reverie” (which, let’s be honest, is just in jazz standards and show tunes. I don’t know a lot of current artists toiling over trying to work that word into their lyrics anywhere…) it always meant dreaming of days of yore with just a titch (it’s a word, slang though it may be) of melancholy.

Come to find out, I am mistaken. (J is pulling out a calendar and writing this day down for posterity and future torment. The day I admitted…in WRITING no less, that I was incorrect.)

But I was close, because it does have to do with letting the mind drift to other thoughts. But as it turns out, it doesn’t necessarily mean recalling the past, nor does it connote sadness. It is in fact rather from the French (ah, the French) for delirium and wandering. It literally means “the condition of being lost in thought.” Or better yet, it means to daydream.

To daydream. I like the word even *more* now. (Add it to the list.)

I can admit out loud at this point in the game that I was sure far before J asked me to marry him that that was the path we were on. In fact, I knew (for me) very early in the game. I believe, after about our third date (which remember, came after three years of solid friendship) that I said to our mutual friend C something like, “If we don’t screw this up by getting in our own way and being stupid, this is the real deal.” Granted, the actual engagement day/ time/ procedure was a complete and utter surprise to me (I was definitely the last person to know it was happening.) But not the whole we’re-probably-going-to-get-engaged-someday part. That I’ve known for a while.

When I found out that J was going to have to go back Over There for a year, I told C that if J was thinking of proposing to me, you know, EVER in his life, that I really hoped he did it before he went back Over There. I needed something to keep me busy while he was gone…something to keep me focused on the happily-ever-after rather than the tedious-here-and-now…and something to keep me actively moving forward toward future US- capital U, capital S. I could not possibly have known at the time how dead-on that was going to be in terms of me making it through a deployment.

Because I gotta be honest. Reverie is my life line right now…my air supply (as in, my sustenance not the soft-rock, Australian 80’s ballad producing duo.) Reverie’s what I’ve got. And I’m getting really good at it.

Now, I’ve always been one of the more imaginative people I know. I can dream up A LOT. And when you couple that with the fact that I am not only a daydreamer with a good imagination, but also a PLANNER, well. My daydreams are never half-baked; let’s just say that. I have a contingency plan for every possible potential daydream outcome.

Here’s a prime example: I am convinced that I am going to win Publisher’s Clearinghouse someday. Not like, sorta think it’s possible, but actually truly believe that it’s going to happen for me. And maybe all poor people have that same dream, but I honestly believe it to be real (I’ve seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a LOT of times. Publisher’s Clearinghouse = my Golden Ticket.) At any rate, one of my best girlfriends is a financial planner. And, true story, we have already discussed things like taxes on winnings, lump sum payouts versus annuities, and how much can be given at any one time as a gift to someone without raising tax questions. Yup. Knock on my door tomorrow, Publisher’s Clearinghouse. I’m already covered. (P.S. I’d like to go on record as saying, you know, should any P.C. folks be reading along, that I’m a really generous person, and J is even more so than me…and giving us this money would do lots and lots of people a lot of good, not just us. I promise. You know…just in case you were wondering.)

So now, you’ve got my frequent (and necessary for sanity) daydreaming. You’ve got my way-too-overly-active-imagination (I’m winning Publisher’s Clearinghouse.) You’ve got my planning penchant (my nickname is the Binder Bitch, as you may recall.) And now, add to that my time of transition and my copious amounts of J-less free time. What this spells, my friends (I’ve mixed metaphors…perhaps I should say “what this equals...”) What this equals, my friends, is me being completely, utterly, 100% head-in-the-clouds-broken-with-realty, lost-in-thought All Day Long right now. Reverie, indeed.

When J first left, it was wedding daydreams primarily. Picturing the day with one dress v. another. One set of flowers v. another. Summer wedding v. fall wedding. Big wedding; little wedding. Red flowers; white roses. Bridesmaids in blue v. flame. And then, for each of these scenarios, I had planned out the contingencies. “If three bridesmaids in red (which they all look very good in) in the fall, then they’ll be summer tan, so that’ll look good…but how do we get A here for the fitting at the same time as CA & CI, when she has kids going back to school…and CI will have just had a baby and CA potentially might be pregnant by then so, what dress will look good on all three, and….” Well, you get the general idea.

I think it goes without saying that I’ve stepped reverie and planning up to a whole new level.*

* Please note my use of the phrase “a whole new”. This is in lieu of the phrase which many of you might have tried using “a whole nother.” I hope when you see that latter phrase in print, you realize how wrong it is when you are saying it. Because you say it. I promise you say it. Everyone says it. But as you can clearly see, “nother” is not, in fact a word. It isn’t even an abbreviated word, because you’re not trying to say “a whole another.” What you are TRYING to say is either 1) a whole other or 2) another. Correct iterations of the sentence above include: 1) I’ve stepped planning up to a whole other level; 2) I’ve stepped planning up to another level, or my personal choice; 3) I’ve stepped planning up to a whole new level. Incorrect usage of the English language at work in the sentence above: I’ve stepped planning up to a whole nother level. Come on. Spell check doesn’t even let you do it. Get it together people.

Yesterday, I applied for three different jobs in three different cities with three different application deadlines. Talk about daydreaming. For each job, I have figured out the “if they should call, I could interview when.” I have thought about how to rent out my place. I have thought about where I’d live. How I’d move. I’ve looked at apartments. Looked at houses. Looked for job opportunities for J in each of the areas. I have looked at short term housing and buying a home. I have found storage units available to stash my stuff temporarily should I need to move in the next five days of my life. I’ve planned my “two week’s notice” speech. I’ve interviewed for all three jobs in my mind. I found our dream house online through a real estate agent and have played out the scenarios “so, if I work here for the next two years and then when J gets home he can’t find a job there and we have to move to a different city, then we rent the house out, we move to here, we…” pant. pant. pant.

I realize that the potential for setting myself up for heartbreak is high. There’s no reason to believe that I’ll get interviews for these jobs. That I’ll be doing anything other than exactly what I’m doing right here and right now. No dream house. Just this apartment. No moving from this town to some exciting city. Just the predictable sameness of another year here. I know that having a big imagination and the penchant for daydreaming BIG has the side effect of crushing disappointment sometimes.

But a girl can dream, can’t she?

I know, that I’m probably not winning Publisher’s Clearinghouse. I know that I’m probably not getting a new job…or apartment…or dream house anytime in the near future. But that’s ok. Because right now, these dreams of the “what’s next” are keeping me really good company. And when that someday comes, which I’m certain it will, I’ll be prepared for it.

The comforting thought in all of this is that daydreaming about the wedding…that’s not a dream. That’s real. Spending the rest of my life with a man I love more than I ever dreamed I could. Also real. So maybe dreaming big isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s self-fulfilling. And as the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard said, “Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plentitude of the soul.”

I’m blessed to have that gift in abundance at work in my life right now. And if you see me and I seem lost in thought, it’s because I probably am. Just let me have it. I’m most likely arranging china on our Thanksgiving table, in our home of 30 years, together with J, our kids, their kids and the dog.