Currently: Summer 2024

Flannery O'Connor, butterflies, and hearts that last.

It’s skunk season. There isn’t much to say about that except, “BE YE VIGILANT.”

It’s also butterfly season, a time that always makes me wistful. What a feat to know it’s time to transform without knowing what it is you’ll become. And then you have wings. And then you fly.

A friend I went to graduate school with asked me if I wanted to read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood together and I agreed. We spent the month of June with Hazel Motes and texting each other all kinds of existential observations and questions. It was such fun that we decided we had to read more, and so we are alternating between her essays and her short stories. I guess you could say we are in our Flannery O’Connor era.

I have a new office with a window. I also have a new position at work. I get to be one of the Academic Advisors, and I think once I learn the ropes, I’ll be pretty good at it.

Other news - I will be teaching Freshman Composition at Washtenaw Community College once a week, and I am now officially a SHiNE Dance Fitness instructor.

I believe this is the first time since I tried out for the Drill Team in 1990 that I carved out a place for myself instead of trying to make myself into something I think others want me to be. Years ago, someone called me a “Yes girl.” It was meant as a compliment, but I don’t want to be that girl anymore. It is time to transform. Find my wings. Figure out how to fly.

One of the perks of this new situation is I get to take my Corby on walks. On one recent traverse around the neighborhood, I found a heart. This wasn’t a chalk heart - it was made with the kind of paint used to make lanes on the street. A permanent heart - one that would stay through whatever it is that comes next.