We’ve had our laughs, haven’t we? And our cries, too. Of course, there were always things we couldn’t say to each other. Maybe they were things we knew, things we didn’t have to say. I’d like to think that was the case. I’d like to believe that explanation.

I miss you already. Your shining face, your occasional supportive comment, the fact that you were there when I was here. We had this moment in the ether. It was ours.

I won’t stay away forever. I couldn’t. There’s something I have to do. But I’ll be back.

Maybe in a month or so.

Very busy. Loads to do. Will write soon.

Dearest Darling,

How is the trip? I hope you are having a good time and getting lots of work done. The children and I are fine here without you. What I mean to say is, Don’t be alarmed. Insurance covers most of it. As for the fish, well, there’s no use getting sentimental about him. Especially now. Oh, darling, it’s all going to be fine, and in six months or so you’ll barely remember what happened. Not that you know what happened, if you’ve only read the news reports. They get things wrong, around the margins, usually. Or sometimes. Anyway, it was lucky we’d turned off the gas. Think about how bad things could have been. Right? Everything’s relative, except morality. Wink, wink. One great thing is that the kids love camping. They’re as happy as pigs in shit.

The point is, darling, that I don’t want you to worry. Keep your head in the game! We’ll still be here, when you get back.

Love, etc.

Last week I wasn’t myself. David’s parents took the kids for two nights, which left me three days where I wasn’t a mother, or was only barely a mother. I went into the city. My skirt had been ripped into pieces by the train so I had bought a new skirt at Grand Central, and this was the skirt I wore for the next three days. It was tight, and hard to walk in, and I wore it with high heels. I didn’t feel like I looked like a hooker but there was whistling.

I went to the Benglis/Bourgeois show I’d wanted to see. Bourgeois is a genius, she sculpts in some kind of language that is entirely invented and completely transparent, to express feelings that you have, but that you didn’t know you had. These feelings were mixed up for me with the fact that there were people working in the gallery who wouldn't acknowledge that I was there. I said, Hello, and they looked away. I searched up and down Ninth and Tenth Avenues for the book store I liked but couldn’t find it anywhere. I hailed a taxi.

I met David for dinner and he brought me roses, which I also experienced as not normal, not for me. The food was spicy and my nose ran. We walked back up to our hotel and my legs rubbed together and chafed and in fact I was in some pain. At the hotel, everything was dim, faded, ugly, cheap and old, and the anonymity that I normally love in hotels joined in the general assault on my self. In the morning David left before I got up and I didn’t want to leave the flowers in the room. I knocked on the door to the staff hall and offered them to the people there, who had been laughing and happy. When a woman came forward to take them I said, Happy Valentine’s Day, early? Or late? And she laughed and hugged me.

Crap, I felt weird. I couldn’t write in the blog, I couldn’t shape myself into anything, and I still wonder if I am shapeable, if I am a thing, or if I'm something less defined than that.

But the children are back, which helps. And I know what I am going to write next, which also helps. Tennis team tryouts are next week. Our kitchen has windows and doors. Everything will start to appear orderly again, and I will know my place.

I am going to take one more break this summer. I should be back after Labor Day.

It’s not that I’m not doing things, I am doing things, I am doing a lot of things, I’m taking trains into the city and ripping my skirt on the arm rest so that my underwear shows and I have to run into a store and buy a new skirt, I’m meeting my youngest sister for dinner and getting schmackled on a bubbly red, I’m walking home from the train station at 11 under a full moon, I’m reading the entire New Yorker in bed in the morning while the men hammer and bang things somewhere else on my house. The house! I’m driving to Stamford to look for wood flooring, I’m agreeing to expensive additional procedures for the renovation, I’m calling the tree man in for a consultation, I’m talking to our contractor about our progress and handing him an enormous check, I am in pursuit of the perfect front door.

I'm reserving a room at a midtown hotel, where I'm planning to meet my husband tonight, I'm holding an appointment for a haircut on Wednesday, before I head to the Open with my father. I’m slowly making my way through Saturday, although it’s overdue, I’m going through the children’s papers for the first day of school, I’m following Gonzales’ resignation, and the arrest of Larry Craig. I'm eating breakfast, and I'm even doing the dishes.

The children are gone, is the dramatic way of saying that they are at their grandparents’, and happy, and that they slept through the night. I had so many things to do in their absence, but I didn’t understand how I would feel, doing them.

I'll be back soon, I promise.

I'm going to a wedding. I will be back in a week.