A Ribboned Gift

I wasn't looking for connections. They were handed to me. Already tied up in a bow with three ribbons.

Yesterday my oldest daughter graduated from college. She's done the whole thing by correspondence. CLEP tests, online classes, Dante's tests. She went in at noon for the big six credit math CLEP and called an hour later.  "I PASSED!"

Yesterday the space shuttle Discovery made its 39th and final launch. We watched it on NASA web. 

Yesterday I got an invitation to read my essay, "Oral Histories" at The Pinch journal's release party. March 25th. In Memphis. Oral Histories is an essay about my oldest daughter, her seven years of illness and slowly regained health. It is full of her love for the stars. The essay follows different space shuttle launches and spends long evenings in the grass gazing at stars and satellites.  It ends with my daughter beginning correspondence college.

Does it mean anything? The day she graduates, the shuttle launches for its last time, and the writing about it all goes to a release party. We are tied - interwoven - to so many things in life.

Homemade chocolate cake with coffee-flavored icing. Life is a ribboned gift.

I've always avoided the whole conversation. Like a sort of jinx, even though I don't believe it. If I ran across a blog or essay on the subject, I blocked it out. Reversing its power. Challenging the whole concept. If it doesn't exist, I don't have to deal with it. But as a writer, if I know anything, it is to write about what you don't want to write about. Face it. Write through it.

So here I am. I've been writing creative nonfiction for ten years. And for ten years I've been avoiding the dreaded 'writer's block' like the plague, well, more like the flu. And it worked fine. Until I finished my first book. And now I'm stuck. Separate essays in the book have been published in literary journals and two of them have been anthologized. The ms is drifting around in several contests.  

And I'm wondering where did the gift go?
If creativity not only uses energy but also produces it, then it's a circle.
I seem to have fallen.
Out of.

I want to fly again. Like a trapeze artist. Flinging myself up into the air of words, waiting for the free fall, trusting.  But I can't seem to let go of the bar.