on it goes

when you're making other plans
Writing about my trip in my PJs, at the kitchen table, still sitting here on a discombobulated morning, I think about the lovely time I had back east with family and friends, feel pleased and happy over the SOMOS anthology, look forward to seeing a copy of good friend Phyllis's poetry collection, 3 AM, that I helped edit and which also came out this week. As I review photographs and post to fb and this blog, I learn that my good friend Joan's husband, a seasoned pilot, was killed yesterday in a small aircraft at the Taos airport. This is such an unimaginable event. At the coffee place yesterday with an acquaintance who bought one of my small cameras, we had to stop talking as EMS trucks, ambulances and fire trucks wailed noisily by. She said she'd just heard there was a crash at the airport. Grant immediately flashed into my mind but I dismissed the thought. I'm feeling a bit shaken up at the swiftness with which life can end. So I go back to the photos, the ominous-looking sky over the water, try to find balance.

Like the small feet that wore the socks I made for him, handed me a banana with a phone call, before dancing away in the socks...

...the striking image on an ordinary walk to the SoNo Bakery...

...the lobsters my 85 year old brother and his wife cooked for me...

...the awareness that on this day one year ago, my nephew, their oldest son, died unexpectedly. The lobsters died, too, but we ate them and drank Prosecco toasts to John.

An equilibrium is lost, there's no turning back, and joy is always balanced by sadness. Trite and obvious, but that's what I'm feeling. And also that when a 2 1/2 year old hands you a banana and says you have a call, you answer it.