Anti-Climax

The end, I thought once, should come

With emotion, as it sometimes does:

Either quietly, the tense reserve of the raindrop

About to land, or echoing instead the thundering

Bombast above—fat dark angry clouds fast evaporating—

There is always something, the build, climax, dropping off

(“Resolution” they used to call it, but we know

Better);

Once I had spent enough time studying plot,

To be revolted by the austerity, grace, life

Uses to end it all—all, the ugly morning kisses,

Foot to head reading on a couch, waking

Too early, hands on each other, all that—

After carefully boiling it down to words, promises, furrowed emptiness.

All this, that was sticky in the throes of emotion,

That life smoothed with tender fingers, the

Great parent prying away a toy with

Honey words.

The end, now here, is unnecessary,

Having squatted for months between us,

The toad that, finally, has shed its warts, curling

Up into a vast tree, branches licking our faces

On each side, firm enough to say “no more.”

Written 2003 (?)

Feeling loss

There's choral music in our house tonight.  My husband says it is Bach... it's drifting up the stairs from the record player, and all I know is that it's beautiful.

The record is a hand-me-down from his parents, back when they were giving away all their earthly possessions, back before his dad got sick.  The album cover is entirely in German, so we gather they bought it when they were living in Germany in the early 1980s.  It reminds me of his dad and makes me a little sad.  The piece is appropriately elegiac.

There's been a lot of sadness in our family this year, as we've faced losing family members (close, dear family members) for the first time.  When D.'s dad got sick three years ago and D. said, "I guess it's time to put on my big-boy pants now," the universe listened and responded.  It's hard to bury parents, and then grandparents; it's even harder to realize that this is only the beginning, that with each year we'll come a little closer to losing our dearest family.

Of course it's inevitable, and I wish the departed nothing but peace, particularly those who were in so much pain near the end.  I'm not sad for them, only heartsick for myself, and for D.  We've missed them terribly.

March Nerves

January and February are behind me - indeed, much of my 2L year has passed - and I'm starting to feel a bit of relief.  Out of the wilds of early winter, I think I'm finally starting to raise my head and look around, get a good glimpse of the world again.  These past six months have been tough.  Brutal, even.  So let's not talk about them.

Rather, let's talk about now.  It's March 1.  We're all unthawing.  (Or, in the case of those of us here in North Carolina, just warming up.)  But my nerves are a-jangling.

I have an important interview next week, one for which I'm hadn't emotionally prepared.  (See supra paragraph about going to ground in January and February... law school doesn't really allow time for emotions or hope.)  And now I'm nervous because this could be it.  This could actually stop the train, the endless cycle of interviews, the gearing up every semester ready to tackle another round of job searching (though slightly different, every time).  And I desperately don't want to screw up.

So one more time I'll press my favorite shirt, send my favorite suit to the dry cleaners, make sure the scuffs on my suit shoes are colored over with sharpie.  I'll put on the barest amount of makeup, do my best to make sure my hair looks... if not conservative, presentable.  I'll research the hell out of the interview, read every bit of work-product I can get my hands on.  I'll have my portfolio with a list of questions.  And then, somehow, on the morning of the interview, some switch will flip, and I'll become a person I only see during interview days, someone who is pleased to meet everyone, who has an answer for everything, who smiles incessantly, and who, frankly, shows off.

I'll drive home from the interview exhausted.  I'll take off my suit, wash my face, and put my everyday self back on.  And I'll add one more tally to the evidence of my conflict: who am I, if I can do this?  And where, in the end, will it get me?

All my lives

I'm not quite thirty but feel I've lived a number of lives already.  Many of them, it turns out, are documented somewhere in the blogosphere, and I was just reading over a few of them tonight and realizing... what happens if this current life doesn't get documented either?  I'm already halfway through... what if, 10 years from now, I try to find the documentation of the three years I (we) spent pushing through law school, and it doesn't exist?

So here I am.

My previous lives, for the record:

• High school student
• College student
• Grad student?
• Teacher
• Paralegal and South Carolina resident
• Paralegal and North Carolina resident

Each of these time periods, no matter how short or how long, feels incredibly distinct and, in fact, distant to me.  I've recently returned to the Triangle area, where I lived while in graduate school, but it seems like a different place, as I seem like a different person.  Even so, I have writing that documents who I was and how I felt during that time. 

Now, I'm a law student.  Five years, ten years, twenty years from now, I'd like to remember how it feels.