My goal was to post once a week on Fridays. I had posted randomly, sometimes a few times in a week, sometimes a few times in a month. It seemed to me that reliability should count for something. Mostly often, I plan ahead; sometimes I write a post at the last minute. Like today.

This past week I’ve had a cold, a really bad cold. It’s not flu or Covid (I tested), but I’ve been sicker than I’ve been since I retired from teaching full time in 2015. I feared a complication such as brokitis or pneumonia, which was typical when I was still teaching. I still feel sad about retirement. I’d been sick for weeks over the winter of 2014-2015. Complete retirement wasn’t what I wanted, which was to cut back on my schedule by 25-50%—I was willing to be flexible. It’s been eleven years and I no longer want back into a classroom. I was told I had built a reputation for being “strict” and “tough” and for success in what my students accomplished. After retirement I had a class, one class. I could teach college writing, which I was doing until 2019. I don’t need to do any of those things. People assumed I would retire when I was 72; it was in fact my plan. I’m past that now.

I look my age. Seriously. My face has gone to the crepey, fine wrinkles I associate with my grandmother. I am her age at the time she died. She was frail by then, Fay [Jackson Smith] Hansen, my Gaga. Her second husband, Lavin Hansen, Papa, carried her up and down stairs for a few years, and then she made her bad on the living room sofa, and then a hospital, and then, like most Americans, she died in a hospital bed. She had a Mexican mother and blue eyes, wore a size 4 shoe and was no more than five feet tall.

I don’t look much like her, and I am still walking.

If I knew how my age was supposed to feel, I might know whether I feel my age. I keep moving. Even though I’ve been ill, I’ve walked ten miles in the last week. I haven’t run, but I think I could manage a short run. I’ve baked bread, moved furniture, cut 5″ off my hair, doomed-scrolled, read two books, and formatted a short novel for printing this past week. It’s at a printer and I should have sample pages fairly soon, before they print one hundred copies. I plan to number them 1-100 and have made a place to do that in the book. About twenty of those copies will go to people I owe because they helped me along the way—editors, mentors, and authenticity editors. The other copies will be available for purchase later this summer.

The best part of printing ALL THE DAUGHTERS SING is that I am forced to stop working on it. I will move on. I have a ghost story and a YA novel that want revision. I have no plan to submit either for publication. If I’m able to find homes for 100 copies of Daughters, I might print A SINGLE FACT CAN SPOIL A GOOD ARGUMENT, which is not speculative but realist fiction. In the weeks before graduation, a teenager who has had a miserable time in high school recons what’s coming next might be worst. People keep telling her these are “the best years of your life.” What if they’re right?

Or, I could print a collection of short stories—a collection of speculative or realist stories, each about half published.

Or, I have other options.

There is some weaving to do, several quilts building in my head, a sweater that wants a neckline and sleeves knitted. I have a pieced top in mind.

And running. My training is set back from this cold. When I stop coughing, I’ll begin running again.