falling action

Divorced is like my favorite fourth grade word:denouement--the final resolution that comes after the falling action in a book or play.  The difference is denouement is a lovely word that makes you want to say it five times fast.  As one sound melts into the next, you become a Frenchmen, philosopher, and poet in just three syllables.

Divorced is a word that everyone would rather you not say, unless you have something delicious and salacious to report. No one appreciates the dull depressing-ness of day-to-day-divorced, and so it is said quietly, and only when unavoidable like the another unpleasantly existential word: diarrhea.

Denouement can be a welcomed thing when you have been sitting too long and are eager to send the actors on their way and go home, or when it marks a finished reading assignment.  But divorced is a resolution that comes with too many pages remaining. And so day-to-day you plan meals, and birthdays, and holidays, but they seem to be after the fact, like you are trying to create business for characters who should have already left the stage.

If divorced were a short story then it would be a tragedy.  But actually it is just an event in a saga--despite its apparent willingness to be an epitaph.

 And sometimes--even on the most beautiful October days-- its characters just need a reminder that life is as colorful as it has ever been, and that there will be rising action, and new chapters again. And so this is my message to that Author of the Universe: Any day now.

But in the meantime, here is October in medias res.

 There was bread.  Every now and then I make Sandra Lane of Litchfield Maine's Honey Whole Wheat recipe, as an offering and smoke signal that I am in need of angelic intervention. Sandra was as crusty as crusty Mainers get but she was also an angel on Earth--that's how Maine angels tend to be-- before she died too young from heart disease. Every now and then I feel her presence, and still feel grateful for her example and friendship.

 There were piles of leaves and fun with the leaf blower.

I took Grant, William, and the school girls to the carnival at the elementary school.

The kids always look forward to the Scales and Tales exhibit. The boa constrictor was the favorite thing of the night.

Another day of leaves.

More falling action.