Transitions

I took my third child to college on Saturday.  Today is her 18th birthday.  Neither of these statements, though true, seems at all probable or possible when I read them.  It is certainly not possible that I have three children in college, one of whom is a Senior.  It is certainly not probable that I must go through this transition two more times, nor is it possible that I will do so with any more grace or ease than the previous three upheavals.

Transitions in life, as in writing, can be hard to manage.  In life they sneak up behind you or jump out from behind a door, scaring you out of your wits and knocking you flat on your behind, breathless, bruised, befuddled and stunned.  In writing they taunt you with their necessary requirements of grace and of subtlety...a good transition is seamless and unnoticed.  A bad transition sits up and screams in flashing neon "LOOK WHAT THIS STUPID WRITER JUST TRIED TO DO!"  

We fall back on our old middle school tricks:   therefore, thus, because, since (watching movies all night so you can't focus during the silent daylight hours, reading until your eyes blur to silence the voices buzzing in your brain, shopping for the absent, cooking for the absent, forgetting to take care of the present).

When all else fails, numbering works well and provides a sturdy, easily noted row of bony vertebrae on which to hang the piece.  Pedestrian tactics, yes, but the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other at least gets you to the conclusion.  So make a to-do list of the obvious:  laundry, post office, bank.  Thick, black ink marks a job done, a day concluded.  Make another list, throw in another "because", as you fill the page one paragraph at a time, one day at a time, one sentence at a time, one word at a time, one heartbeat at a time.

In conclusion, transitions suck.  The best ones go unnoticed.  The worst ones hurt like hell.

Jumping In

I am standing on the shore, dipping my big toe into an ocean of blogs...several years too late to make a noticeable splash, virtually too weightless (in only the cosmic sense) to make an impression, yet here I go.

"..." That's the almost imperceptible ripple as I enter the blogosphere.

The need to record must be quite a universal urge, even in such an ephemeral medium as this, a medium I still can't get my mind around, can't begin to comprehend. Is there a giant file cabinet somewhere bulging with blogs, all crumpled edges and dogeared corners, with a stoop-shouldered, bleary-eyed little woman shoving them into a drawer that cannot hold even one more? Yet here is one more, my one more, my own hectic interlude (and perhaps, if there is a reader out there, yours, too?)

I am standing on the edge, about to jump in. Hold my hand and jump with me, will you?