How things are different

:: The Lucky D, back in Edison ::

My New York trip has been so good. It seems a small miracle to me that I can tell the difference between the twins now, not that they look so different, but their personalities are usually capable of giving them away. After dinner one night when everyone had pajamas on and had eaten up their spaghetti and meatballs, Thomas backed his little butt into my lap as I sat cross legged on the floor working on the pirate ship I bought them for their early Christmas present. I still don't have the kind of rank that would allow me to keep Max from running after his mom as she heads down to the basement to put clothes in the dryer, but if she's in the room, sometimes I can get shoes on the twin that she isn't currently dressing. I'm allowed to make toaster waffles and serve them cut up in little pieces with peanut butter and maple syrup, and I am allowed to spoon yogurt into mouths in order to hasten the school preparations. This is good progress.

Today is my last day and then it's home.

I lost my keys the other day. Not for like, 15 minutes. For hours. Several hours, on a weekday morning, after I had showered for work, gotten dressed, made my tea, just as I was ready to leave for work. I kept wondering when this was going to make me cry, but I just couldn't even believe it, at least not enough to be upset. It seemed perfect, in a certain way, after all this thinking I've been doing about how I have too many things. I found them, eventually, dropped on the floor in a pile of things.

At some point, my writing on this blog took a certain turn, I think, took on this melancholy tone which was always there occasionally but not always. Lately it feels like the melancholy tone is always, and I'm not sure I'm so into that. So when I think about writing here, I just kind of get stopped.

I've started going to knit night on Tuesday nights, and I love that so much it makes me want to write. The irony of that is that the thing that makes knit night so good is that it's exactly what makes it the kind of thing that no one should be writing about. It's private and self-contained in this Edison way that casts a spell I don't want to break. I will say that it's been a surprise to realize, by knitting with other people, just how deep a knitter I've turned out to be. One of the things I love about knitting, like photography or dressage, is that the ratio of what you know to what you don't know doesn't change as you learn more. That is, you just learn how much more there is to learn, so it's easy to always feel like a beginner. I suppose all the things I like best are like this, including writing. It's humbling, and hopeful.