“Life goes on / full of silence and clamor / in the grey cities / in the far bourgs / in the white cities by the sea / where I go on / writing my life / in neither blood nor wine.

—-From Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “At Sea,” courtesy of my good friend.

Some days I wonder if you know that I’m still here, listening. I’m reading your words. I’m watching you continue to churn this bloggy butter and I’m tasting it (thick, rich, unexpectedly sweet). Please don’t mistake the quiet in this place for apathy, or think that I don’t relish its sticky taste anymore. I do. Right now it just feels really good to sit back and observe, to save the hard work and grittiest words for other notebooks, other rooms, other phone calls.

Here’s the ironic thing–I value the privilege of writing publicly today more than ever before, even as I draw further inward myself, pull my attic hatch mouth closed behind me and burrow up into my head. I still hold tightly to your words, the braver the better, even as I choose to nod along silently. I’m watching the way you lift each other up and I am nodding, nodding, nodding. Maybe it was my turn to talk for a while back then, and maybe today it’s just my turn to listen, who knows. This quiet isn’t angsty or dangerous like before, and it’s not even self-protective–it’s just still. Steady, open, and good. My whole life I’ve been straddling this teeter totter, feverishly pressing my feet back and forth between each end seeking balance, never really getting that if I just held still and tightened my center, it would come. Steady footing. Today, I get it.

Even better, a few days from now I’ll have the opportunity to hold your hand in mine, many of you, and hear you own your own words–and, unlike in the past, I just don’t feel anxious. I’m painfully aware what a fragile, gorgeous opportunity it is to pack up my family and show them New York City, really take it in, with them, with you. Lord, that’s a gift. I never used to see these sorts of gifts before, not really, not through the fog of anxiety or stress or fear. I kicked so many pretty packages for so many years as I stumbled along, well-intentioned, but unseeing.

Some of you have asked if this trip will be hard for me, and I don’t know how to make you understand that it won’t. I have a new love for experience, a joy for the day, that I just didn’t have before. I am no longer afraid to speak up when it counts. I finally found that greener grass and then the fence up and disappeared, the lushness spread and bled all around me further than I can see. I am exactly where I was always meant to be. I’m lying down making lawn angels, squinting up into the sun. (And if I need a reminder? There’s always the Serenity Suite.)

But some mornings, like this quiet summer Saturday while you’re in here looking for connection or out there slip-and-sliding with your kids or anywhere at all licking the sticky juice of white peaches from your forearms, I want to call your name. I want to lie my head in your lap and close my eyes against the stroke of your hand on my hair, just be out here in this space with you. Remember what it feels like to throw words like jacks with no rulebook, no deadline, no older kid standing behind me, arms crossed. To just let loose these words, a handful at a time, and watch you watch them roll. Fall where they may, for once.

This world pitches and rolls, cycles through its seasons, and I’m so grateful for its tilt, right now, today. Thank you for keeping it turning, for still being out there, for still hearing when I call out, for that drum-beat reverberation, that cosmic nod of recognition, for your lap, for your hand, for here, for now.