It's Shef's last day of high school.

When I started this blog, Shef was six months old. I chronicled lots about our daily experiences together, and so many of our best and funniest stories are right here, searchable.

When he got older, I stopped being so detailed about things in my writing. I can't very well coopt his choices and adventures. This is my website, not his. It's his life, not mine.

But the funny stories kept happening, as did the winning conversations and random moments and track meets and school dances and Covid routines and just everything. It all kept happening.

It'll still keep happening, but we're on a long track to different. The track went in a circle, and now he's on a longer straightaway, I guess, if that metaphor could hold.

 I'm feeling the glimmerest of glimmers of creativity.

Maybe that's too strong.

Maybe it's a glimmer of whatever the precursor is to creativity. Maybe it's the willingness to at least sit at my desk and let my eyes wander while I press the keys that will make the words that will become... something.

After all, we cannot deny that I just wrote that little paragraph right up there. And also this sentence and the one that came before. I am, in fact, writing at this very moment.

Also at this very moment, I'm the substitute teacher in a ninth-grade religion class at my school. They're taking a test on Jesus and the early church. From glancing at the assessment materials, I know they have to write about the Acts of the Apostles, New Testament letters, and the Book of Revelation. It seems hard, but the mood in here is calm. The girls seem to know their stuff.

I hope they do. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they can write about Ascension and Pentecost and heaven and hell.

I really need to fall back in love with writing. 

Or, what I need to do is just reclaim writing as something that I enjoy doing.

Or, I just need to sit down at my keyboard and make myself write something. 

Like these sentences right here.

Writers write, right? I'm not sure who I am anymore.

But:

Here's a status report:

School: Sad to say that with five lessons remaining over eight school days, my students and I have been limping to the finish line. Yesterday, two of my most dedicated told me they were "checked out" and "done," respectively. I heard and understood them, and yet, I made us discuss Chapter 19 of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Topics of conversation included: God's love and our potential salvation, the role of suffering in our development as humans, the fallibility of romance, and the return of the prodigal son. So, we clearly gave it our all despite our collective attitudinal challenges.

Running: Running is my favorite lately. Thank god for being outside and having a plan to follow and trying hard at something that doesn't involve thinking up brilliant ideas.

Covid: I'm tired of Covid and tempted to become a Covid denyer. I mean, not really. I do believe in science. But, maybe enough Covid is enough Covid. Covid is bad and dumb.

The Future: I'm going to teach school again next year while I write my next book, and it'll be ninth grade. I have never taught ninth grade before, and I'm sure I'll like it. I'm staying here at the school where I work right now, where I've been teaching eleventh grade. I like it here, and I'm going to stay.

I have had an off couple of weeks with sub-par work habits, including extra procrastination and rationalization.

I know the drill: that work breeds work, that discipline breeds discipline, that it's easier to keep going than to start.

But sometimes, even though you know what you should do, you still don't do it. I'm going to start soon. I'm pretty sure.

I've been tired, and the residual motion sickness/vertigo I've got going on is not helping.

I have had vertigo at least twice before, and I'm happy to report that this time, it's relatively minor.

The first time I succumbed to vertigo, it was among the last straws in a time of Very Bad Health (VBH). I was only 19 years old, and VBH was something I'd never really considered. But, I had mono that went undiagnosed forever. I had to drop out of school. I got many infections, and then, perhaps due to an inner ear pestilence, I got vertigo.

Every time I moved, every time I stood up, every time I turned my head, I vomited. What we say here in the West household is that I visited vom.com. It was probably the quintessential visit to that fictional, disgusting locale. After the vertigo hopped on the VBH train, I took to my bed and didn't get out until I was all the way better.

I also had vertigo just last year when Are We There Yet? came out, and I spent inordinate time on the computer and on my iPhone doing virtual events and trying to interact with readers and reviewers during lockdown. I didn't realize phone scrolling could cause vertigo, but it can. I googled it. I'm pretty sure I wrote about it. 

(I just checked, and I didn't write about it. But, I did write about a different bout of vertigo I had in 2006. I have no memory of that particular episode, probably because I was in graduate school and had a two-year-old, and hadn't slept in a million moons.)

Anyway, we've established that I've had vertigo before. I had it again beginning last week after several harrowing Uber rides and bumpy flight from Chicago to Minneapolis. I went right to work on it with less screen time and those wrist bands with accupressure thingies. Now, I'm no longer on the way to vom.com, but I've been taking Bonine from time to time for stubborn nausea. 

I don't care for vertigo, as it turns out, but who would?

I was catching up with a friend recently on a run. This friend--a lifelong friend named Molly who often asks the question that everyone else shies away from--asked me why my brother Kevin died last year.

Why was he an addict?, she wanted to know. Was it his genes (we're each adopted from separate birth families)? Was it his choices? How did it happen? How did he die alone on his couch and stay there by himself for five whole days before anyone knew?

And, I can't remember how or if she asked me this, but I felt the question in the conversation: Was there anything you could have done? 

I have to say, I hadn't really thought about it. Was there anything I could have done? Who would want to open that ancient unlabeled tin can and stick a tongue in?

Days later, I was brainstorming in a notebook about my new fictional character, Sophie Jones, the potential subject of my fourth novel

I wrote, "Did Sophie had a sibling who died on her watch?"

I wrote that, and then I looked up at a display about the history of aviation in the Chicago Midway Airport and wondered with a pain just over my sternum, "Did I have a sibling who died on my watch?" And, then I wrote that question down, too.

On our run, I told Molly about how each of Kevin's birth parents struggled with substance abuse, how he was depressed and had a hard time taking care of his mental health, how living with our dad was harder on him than it was on me (I do wonder how much of that fact was my fault), how he lived in a family of people with whom he had so little in common, how he never made good choices about taking care of himself.

I don't know why these things were true. 

I didn't try all that hard to help, is the truth, too. There were reasons for that, and some of them are good.

 The blog has once again been stagnant, but I think about it most every week,

Here's what's happening:

Writing Career: I have now had my third novel published. I can hardly believe it. Three books in three years, and I'm still standing upright most of the time, though I do need naps in the afternoons here and there. I pencil them in for myself religiously. 

I am writing a fourth book (the final one in my contract), but it won't be out next spring. I need to take my time and let the story gel. It's a different sort of story, and we can't rush these things.

Teaching Career: I am teaching English. It's fun and friendly, and I'm going to do it again next year. I know I'll be back at the same school, but I don't know exactly what my job will be. Maybe sixth grade, maybe ninth, maybe a section of eleventh like I'm doing now? Who knows. Whatever it is, I'm sure I can do it. This is the confidence that comes with age and experience.

Grief: I tried to pencil in some time for grieving around the one-year anniversary of Kevin's death, which was last week. But, it turns out, you can't really plan your feelings like you would a haircut or an eye exam. 

Last night at a book signing in Lake Forest, IL, a guy (a fan!) asked me about why I have three dogs, and I--

I found myself telling about how my brother died a year ago, and now I have his dog. And then, the bookseller told me that her sister died twenty years ago, and now she's lived half her life as someone with a dead sister. 

Someday, she said, that will be you, and I'm so sorry.

I cried a little as I rode the elevator up to the fifth floor of the Residence Inn in Mettawa, and then I was fine again. 

I'm fine again right now.

Frank Lloyd Wright: I visited his home in Oak Park, IL today. Turns out FLW was a bit of a cad and kind of an egomaniac. Geniuses can be like that, I suppose. But, wow, his studio space was rather breathtaking in its interlaced octagonalness.

That's it. It's fine. Everything's fine.