Marie Gauthier

Was it a blink for you?

Though they’re older (hello, preschooler, 2nd grader, and 5th grader!), this past long weekend was still spent catching vomit in buckets all weekend long.

I admit there’s less spatter and clean-up involved now that the kids are older. They’re pretty amazing about running for a bowl and not letting it fly where they stand. No small mercy, that.

So in the interim of the Great New Year’s Splash Fest of 2014 and the 2016 Labor Day Weekend of GI Labor, besides parenting the threesome, Tupelonian whatnot, and Collected Poets et cetera, I have

• read many prose books (most recently
  • They May Not Mean To, But They Do, by Cathleen Schine [I truly laughed out loud];
  • Break In Case of Emergency, by Jessica Winter [I recognize so much in this, highly recommend];
  • All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr [A masterwork, no question]
  • The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End, by Katie Roiphe [because death, obviously];
  • When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi [because more death — though it was the epilogue that killed me];
  •  Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld [Absolute pleasure, from beginning to end! I’m a Jane-ite, yes, even so, this is clever and fun] and
  • Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren [essential reading! Aching and deeply smart].)
• visited Seattle, Minneapolis, and LA (be glad you missed that story, this time my own GI debacle #thankyoufoodpoisoning) for AWP;
• ran a few 10ks and three half marathons, and suffered a tibial stress fracture for my pains;
• and enjoyed the company of friends and family without feeling the need to talk about it.

The stress fracture is current news. Have I ever mentioned that we live on the second floor? Luckily my kids are the perfect age to commence child labor. Silver linings!

What I have not done in all this time, besides keep this space active, is much writing of substance.

Finding a new direction since my mom died has been a struggle. Turns out not writing doesn’t help with that either.

So I’m hitting refresh. If you’ve also been stumbling, you do the same. Let’s welcome autumn with our own grand conflagration and begin again.  Begin again.