April 21, 2013

A music practice in the morning, raking leaves and removing dead foliage in the afternoon. There are so many plants popping up here at my new house. My friend J walks around the yard with me at a break in rehearsal pointing out plants I missed, identifying others. I pick up the cloak of normalcy, lying forgotten in the corner, and return focus to my own life.

April 20, 2013

My new yard is full of flowers– Andromeda, violets, and tulips about to bloom. I walk around it in the sun, amazed. It’s a day of unpacking books to fill a new bookcase, and sorting CDs to stay and go. A relief to finally be able to return to my own settling in, interrupted so many times since December. Perhaps calm will stay this time to allow me to pick up the thread of my own transition. I do hope so, for I sorely need to feel grounded, and not at the mercy of the howling chaos that seems to have surrounded me for the past few months.

April 19, 2013

I call mid-morning and talk to the staff who say Mom seems to be settling in well and has been laughing and went to exercise class. Big sigh of relief, although I am sad that they don’t want us to visit or talk to her for awhile as she becomes used to her new surroundings. I shop for things Mom needs, to leave at the front desk, and head for home, past a locked-down Boston. And, glued to the radio, hear the final events begin to unfold. Such alot of death, injury, destruction, and upheaval to be caused by two college students. My heart breaks for Boston and those whose lives will never be whole again because of this twisted act.

April 18, 2013

I leave right after class to drive to NH to help move Mom in. She is exhausted and confused and having trouble keeping her balance. We unpack her clothes and hang a couple of pictures on the wall, and the staff suggest we leave, without saying good-bye, so she can begin to settle in. I so hope she will be able to adjust, yet again, to an emergency move, and will become at home and happy here.

week 236 ~ anarchists or enemies

anarchists or enemies
bombs in the streets of Boston
terror on a sudden breeze
anarchists or enemies
a peaceful afternoon flees
the chaos can’t be undone
anarchists or enemies
bombs in the streets of Boston

April 17, 2013

My brother drives to PA to get our mom. The facts of the marathon explosion continue to surface. The ominous shadow of uncertainty clouds the future and we try to make sense of the many faces of incomprehensible.

April 16, 2013

A surreal day, teaching, juggling tragedies, both personal and collective. I find out that my brother’s niece was next to the 2nd bomb, and next to the boy who died. Only the fact that her friend saw the smoke from the first bomb down the street and yelled that they should run, and they did turn and run 6 steps before the explosion, saved her. “At that moment it was decided that I would live.” she writes eerily in an email, describing how she continued to run deafened down the street sure there was another bomb ahead and she would die. She and her friends all survived, and she was saved from injury by the mailbox between her and the explosion, but her friends were hospitalized w/ shrapnel wounds. I look at the photo online– posted everywhere– showing the bomb and the girl I know, and wonder at luck and fate. Later, of course, we will all realize that the bomber is in the photo too. This horrific event has arrested us all and fixated us on one unchangeable, unfathomable instant, as spring, arriving too late, slips in unnoticed.

April 15, 2013

A day whose course of events unfold unexpectedly. We start off mailing our thankfully finished taxes, and head to our appointment at the memory-care unit. Although we are both expecting to still prefer our favorite pick in RI, it becomes clear as we walk through that this is the place. We confer w/ our sibs by phone and reserve the only room available, that just opened up. I leave my brother to do the paperwork and head for home, hoping to miss rush-hour traffic. Partway there the first reports of the marathon bombing start coming over the radio. The news seems impossible to believe, to those reporting it, to me driving past the city right at that moment. That this joyful annual event has become a tragedy hits hard.

April 14, 2013

My mandolin group Enigmatica records today at my house, including a recorder concerto performed a few weeks ago. When the session ends I put the final touches on my federal taxes, grab the forms for the state taxes, and head up to NH to see the options for Mom up there. We have a lovely dinner, finish our tax documents, and confirm our appointment for tomorrow’s tour. After that we’ll decide together where she’ll be moving. We are hopeful, as we already have a good option in RI. But Mom’s situation in PA is deteriorating rapidly so the move needs to happen asap.

April 13, 2013

Today is the rescheduled gamelan concert from February’s blizzard. We couldn’t get into the theater w/ their supporting tech so I need to be on hand from the group’s move-in at 10:00 AM in an atrium of a campus building that turns out to be a good spot for the music. I steal a couple of hours away from the set-up to meet my bro at a local memory-care unit, but am back for the amazing concert. Home exhausted, my mind racing, the wheel of questions keeps me awake most of the night.