A friend back home said she knew when I was coming for a visit because the moon was full.
I flew back to my new home last night through a storm that nearly flung us out of the sky: seventy mile an hour winds, rain. After midnight, in the back of the plane, people slept across the rows of empty seats and then sat up again. One woman laughed hysterically. Another started to pray. I closed my eyes.
In that weightlessness, my bargain was: let me live, and I will be a better writer (always my deal). But also: I will be a better person.
When I was sick, I watched Saint Ralph, a lovely, funny, sad, and amazingly sweet film. Gilbert Blythe picked it out (I wanted to watch The Fog). In the movie, a boy wants a miracle. I who was never baptized, never confirmed (the minister's wife in the elevator said You don't have to and didn't think I would take her at her word)--what I learned of miracles is this:
1) you have to have faith in yourself
2) you have to be pure
3) you have to pray
I am torn between storm and stillness, weightlessness and lead. What I have learned about myself is: I have always been a storm, even when I pretended I wasn't, even when I thought I was fine. It's time to get serious: to not be fine and then become it: to start writing everything down, to stop drinking, stop watching television, stop putting off, stop wasting time. It's time to be a good friend and a good girlfriend.
I want to begin again.
I know it's the season. Good news is coming. I hope it happens to someone deserving, someone overwhelmed, someone who looks older than her age, who just overdrew her bank account, who lives alone or alone with her children in a messy house she doesn't own, who is afraid of the dark, who can't sleep, who needs an operation, who got a rejection yesterday and fifty student papers to grade today. Please world, pick someone who needs it, and I hope one day I am enough to ask: Pick me.
