My retreat is officially over and all but one of the poems revised, but the poems are not what wakes me during the night, it's a new essay I wrote some notes on at the beginning of the retreat, then put away.

On the way home from the airport last night I told my youngest daughter the story that sparked the essay - an unplanned pregnancy when I was almost twenty-one, the age she is now. I had actually fictionalized the story into a one-act play about that was produced in Boston when she was much younger. (I'm sure she saw it; she saw all my plays, but she was seeing with a pre-teen's eyes and conflated this one with another.)

Telling the true story to her now opened up my memory, sudden insights, surprises; details I had forgotten cracking open into light. I was cozy and warm under the covers; my body resisted moving. But, I didn't want to lose this treasure, so I opened my laptop, seized the flow. I pull on a narrative thread, not the one I thought. Then, I sleep, and when I wake there is more, and notes, and now I'm heading into the thick of it, wondering what is next and how I'll write it.

Cheerfully home to the river and woods. Most of the snow is gone but the river, brook and wetlands are high and spread with melting ice. The trail is all slippery patches. Sandals traded for hiking boots.

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2018