While Day Workers Empty Out the House Across the Street That Burned Down

My mother wants to move back to a place in Oklahoma in which she lived when she was a child. She remembers being happy there, I think. I don’t think about life this way. I don’t know if I will begin someday. I can’t imagine. At present, I don’t look back at the past and think about how much better it was. I don’t think it was better. I don’t think anything in my past has been better than what I have and where I am right now, and that’s not even perfect. My mother is so strong. My mother is so capable. I fear she thinks she has lost it, for herself, under all the…stuff…real and…metaphorical. But I think it’s still there. I think her strength and capability still exists. I wish for her to find it. I wish for her to embrace it.

In Korea, they believe that it is better to be old than to be young. A person’s 60th birthday is called “New Life,” for it is the point at which one begins to live again. I’m told it is a good time to start a new career. I don’t know why exactly. The Koreans that told me about it had a very limited English vocabulary. Perhaps this time, this idea, exists because, to reach the age of sixty, one must have learned a great many lessons. Perhaps it acknowledges the tumult and the confusion of growing up…getting old…living. When we reach sixty, perhaps we arrive. I suppose you could say that about any age. I hate the idea of some determined finale. Now we are such and such age and must begin getting ready for the finale. We are in the final act. If death is the finale, then, in reality, we are always…in so many ways, in the final act. No one is promised tomorrow. So, why this determined age of uselessness in our culture? Why not the new life? My mother is so capable. My mother is so strong. Her new life started a little over 2 years ago. I hope she grabs onto it. I hope it’s exhilarating. I hope it’s everything she deserves, which is so much.

I’ve been spending a lot of time alone lately, since this past weekend anyway. This past weekend came up and bit me on the ass. I wasn’t expecting it to tear me down, to stop me in my tracks the way that it did, but it did just that. I have been very confused. I have been lonely, despite a partner that has been very present. I have been trying to make sense of feelings that I haven’t experienced since I was probably in elementary school. I think I am going to be successful. I think spring is just around the corner.