On the last day before I started back to work I trimmed my beard and tried to take it easy. I picked Lily up at the church, already missing those little moments of ferrying her around. On the one hand a chore, on the other hand a new, small memory. The reflection of Charlotte in the car’s digital display, picturing how she’ll look when she gets older. Walking to the lake with Dawn in the morning as the sun’s coming up and we have the whole park to ourselves. Going back to the sofa and finishing a book where the protagonist dies at the end, a kind of surprise. Noticing how detached and connected I feel at the same time. Like this life is a book where I can go in and out with moments I’m both disinterested and spellbound. No book can hold you for that long. It’s good writing, a good story, or a combination of both. Or neither. I stack each line on top of the last one like it’s a game where you see how high you can go before it all falls down. And then we put the pieces back in the box and move on. It’s a game where there is no winning, only the joy in the odd and unexplained. The amazement of how much you can make from so little. Or the reverse, where I make so little from so much.

Categories: identity, Memoir, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, prose, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer, writing