THE DIM LIGHT OF THE LAMP

It was summer the first time I read James Joyce's novella, The Dead. I read it in that tiny bed by the sea with my husband snoring quietly beside me. At the time, our children were little and we were young. I am not sure what I thought of the story, except that I could only read it in the deep of night when everyone – husband, children, everyone – was bathed, fed, fast asleep, and there was nothing left of the day but the sound of bay waves lapping the pebbled shore. On some nights, an offshore breeze made the old wooden windows rattle in their frames. I turned the pages quietly, tilted the slim book towards the dim light of the lamp.

I don't know why I pulled the tiny volume off of the bookshelf today and hungrily reread it in one sitting; this time, this reading, I am struck. Later, when my husband comes into the kitchen, lifts the pot lid to see what’s for dinner, I tell him, you know, I’ve just read probably the most beautiful thing ever written. He says, oh, then asks after our son, who had some difficulty today. So that I do not try to explain to him what Joyce has done -- how he has made in one small story the universe of human misunderstanding. ­­­

THE LIFE WE WANT TO LIVE

In each of my childhood memories, smoke plumes across the scene. My parents smoked in the car, tipped ashes out of the triangular window, smashed butts into the metal ashtray. They smoked as they cooked, cleaned, weeded the garden. When money ran low, the shopping list looked like this: milk, eggs, bread, case of Marlboro Reds. Sometimes my parents waved at the smoke round their heads, as if it were a pesky fly. But mostly, they loved it. In their marriage, smoking was glue, one thing they shared. When they passed a lit cigarette back-and-forth, taking long, slow drags from the common square, it was an act of intimacy. Even when they could hardly tolerate each other, they smoked well together. This gave us hope.

My father smoked as he wrote articles for the newspaper, wire-rimmed spectacles down on nose, cigarette dangling from lips. For him, smoking and writing were entwined – the DNA of one wound into the other. He always acknowledged that smoking was, what he called, a nasty habit. But he was unable to stop. Or unwilling.

When the lung cancer diagnosis came, my father continued to smoke a pack a day. And as he lay dying in a hospice bed, he held an invisible cigarette between two upright fingers, moving it to and from his lips. In its final push, the cancer metastasized to his brain and he began to vanish in earnest. The last time I saw him, he looked at me, took a puff off of the phantom cigarette and said, do you know, I have a little girl who looks just like you?

I was twenty-six and he was gone.

Habits are just the things we do over and over. We all have them. Some habits will devour everything we love and do. Others bind us to the life we want to live.

NOCTURNE

All day I wait for night -- the cricket whir, the moonlight, the hush. If daylight belongs to all creatures, night is possessive; it takes me.

It has always been hard for me to go to bed. Something deep inside me, something American, wants to stay up and do things. At night, day-tasks vanish -- work, children, meetings, meal preparation, hair concerns, the weedy garden beds. At night, I read the poem, a chapter in the book, I watch a film, I begin to write. If I was drowsy earlier, this flurry of activity rouses me. In the quiet hours, something critical awakens.

The trouble is, the more I do in the night, the less I sleep. The less I sleep, the less I am able to do. I have discovered this: morning, that well-lit realm, never ceases to arrive.