Lost.

Cacia says, "Is she lost?  Lost?...Where is she?"

"Lost," I say.  "We don't know where she is.  We're going to keep looking."

"Will she come home now?  I miss her."

"I don't know baby.  I miss her too."

The dog's gone missing.  

Cacia's Mom, my sister, is gone too.  We know loss.  We also know doubt and uncertainty.  

"Where is she?  Does she miss us?  Will she be home soon?"  

Where Cacia's voice is small, mine is steady.  Controlled.  "We'll do everything we can to find her.  We hope she'll find her way home.  Now it's time for bed, so pick a bubby.  I love you."

In my chest, nagging, my voice echos hers, "Where is she?  Is she lost?  What now?  What do I do?  What's happened?  Is she lost?  What can I do?  Whose fault, whose fault?  My fault?  The door was open.  Did I leave it open?  These things happen, it's no ones fault.  mine.  should have known.  should have done differently."

She woke half way through the night when the light was blue and the air sweating.  She was screaming.

I crawled into her bed and we fell asleep, tangled in a shared dream.  "Where is she?"

The Awful Rowing Towards God

Surrender.

Perhaps it comes only of necessity, when we become too tired to fight.

I'd been hanging onto the teeth of duplicity.  

And then, at some point, I found myself resigned and on my knees.  

Anguish as potential; as an opportunity.  This is how it happens.  And how my rowing begins.

Rowing

by Anne Sexton

A story, a story!
(Let it go.  Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
First came the crib
with its glacial bars.
Then dolls
and the devotion to their plastic mouths.
Then there was school,
the little straight rows of chairs,
blotting my name over and over,
but undersea all the time,
a stranger whose elbows wouldn't work.
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and people who seldom touched-
though touch is all-
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyebal,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat inside me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.

As the African says:
This is my tale which I have told,
if it be sweet, if it be not sweet,
take somewhere else and let some return to me.
This story ends with me still rowing.