moe: i'm not married; indeed, far from it.  that is, josh and i are together still, but i suddenly feel entirely autonomous and yet a part of a couple.  it's weird, illogical, but entirely liberating.

in other news, i'm officially cvh with MA.  my thesis is defended, my letter of acceptance dutifully signed, and my enrollment complete.  what's most exciting, though, is that i am officially a PhD Alumni Fellow (http://www.aa.ufl.edu/fellows/alumni.html).  it's all rather exciting, affirming, and flush.

the bad news, though, that goes along with such a cush honor is that the banquet falls over the raceweekend.  well, actually the friday before charlotte, making it impossible for me to come.  (even if i could afford it...which until i start teaching in july, i can't.)

much love to the sushis, much jealousy for (my failed) reunions.

i have successfully defended my master's thesis. 
and i have been accepted into the phd program here. 

all's well indeed.

valentine as the absent cause.

spectacular views.

I used to steal away from my grandmother’s house while the rest of the family was busy card sharking around the lace-layered, linen-lined dinner table.  I’d tiptoe downstairs to snatch my backpack from the pink bed in the basement bunker--where I was sure that the lumpy mattress fit only my body--making sure that the roundtrip was as silent as possible.  The stairs ended at the always open pantry door--tradition required that I snatch a box of Barnum’s Animal Crackers and a room-temperature bottle of Coca Cola--and the always creaky backdoor.  So much depended upon that oak door decorated with a green-tinged, brass knob and separated from the card table by a jutting plaster addition.  My huckleberry dreams meant opening that door with precision: right hand slowly turning the loose handle and my left hand simultaneously pushing the door towards its hinges and pulling it towards my body until three-quarters open and then sliding out careful that my booty didn’t bump the frame.

I’d always go to the same place: the Meredith Wilson footbridge.  For as much as I thought myself a river-running adventurer, I’d always cross Connecticut Avenue for the Music Man instead of hiking to Lime Creek or bicycling to the Cannonball 457.  I’d ignore my yellow streak to run my hands along the yellow-lined book spines at the adjacent library, to talk with the octogenarian librarian about my reading-champ aunt, and to trace my fingers in the Iowa Kind of Special engravings on the bridge’s planks.   

Once I finished those summer-ritual tasks, I’d walk to the middle of the bridge and sit down, cross-legged, looking at the lawns that lined Willow Creek.  Nibbling on my cookies and sipping the now-flat pop, I’d daydream about the houses and the people that lived inside.  Did they want to sing “Shi-Poo-Pi” as their feet shuffled across the aging wood too?  Did the girls--armed with paperbacks and pencils like me--fancy themselves Miss Marion?  Did they talk to Frank Lloyd Wright when he was architecting the Stockman House?  How did that lawnmower get lodged into the stone wall?  I’d sit there for a few hours, all the while dancing these dreams out in my head, usually careful to be home within a reasonable window of time before my truancy spiraled into a river-floating finn.  

Except for one time.  Except for the last time.  Leaning against a sturdy rail and staring at the River Heights, Wilson’s wooden melody accompanied by water streaming, children giggling, and seventy-six horns honking lulled me to sleep.  I remember railroads and town squares and picnics and barn dances, but before the play played out its “Goodnight, My Love” soliloquy, Uncle Lee nudged me with his oxforded foot.

I jolted.  He smirked.  I blinked.  He chuckled.  I panned the bridge.  He packed my backpack.  I stood up.  He grabbed my hand.  And we walked back to grandma’s house, choreographing my song-and-dance to get out of as much trouble as possible.

I don’t remember the plan.  But I do remember walking in the front door after Uncle Lee to the cards shuffling, the beer bottles still clanging, the coffee cups klinking, and the conversation warbling.  My yellow streak deepening, I twained my spine. 

The Spades continued with one exception.  After swallowing a sip of coffee and blindly peering over her hand, Grandma noted, “I don’t know what it is about that bridge and my kids.”