Image Workshop

Cats are lolling in the patch of sun that is sifting through the bare branches of the tree that I hope I will own in my front yard. I am going outside soon to strip the Christmas lights off the tree. They haven't been on in a while, but they are still tightly coiled around the tree branches. In one month, the tree still might not have leaves on it, but hopefully new buds will have come forward, softening the edges of winter.

And I can't decide if my own edges are soft or hard. My jaw feels hard, angled out from clenching. My legs feel soft, my spine a line of scales sticking straight up like the dinosaurs in Cricket's books, but my shoulders melting.

Lately I have no where to rest my thoughts. Everything I think of is another worry. My relationship, my kid, my house, my family. I resort to images: the sea on a sunny day in Spain, the sound my bike tires make when riding fast down a wooden boardwalk on the way to the beach, the smell of salt water, the feeling of having windows open and bare feet on warm asphalt, sweet Michigan corn.

When I couldn't sleep as a child, my mom would say to me, "Think of something happy and cheerful. Think of Christmas. Think of the Easter bunny." I never thought about those things, but instead thought about diving into a pool, gliding through the water, my grandmother's house, the smell of percolated coffee, the sweet musty smell of church incense.

My mom-- she never knew she was giving me good exercises to see me through this early mid-life depression.

Cats in the sunshine. Cricket's hands and toes. Long stem red tulips in a vase.