99 Words for 99 Days: June 6

6. Wakeup Call

Some days I wake up way too early. Sleep evaporates. Grabbing at the mist does no good, so I get up and usually I begin to write. Fish around in my head. Turn into a Psalmist – Why are you so disquieted within me, O my soul? I hypo some condriacal thoughts – What diet has caused this? What looming illness? Maybe one of the kids – What's wrong? What's happened? I'm Mrs. Castorini. “Who died?” But no one did and nothing's wrong. Only the world has rotated again, and the sensible birds outside my window are calling.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 5

5. Venus and The Queen

The transit of Venus only happens twice eight years apart and then not again for more than a hundred years. This time, it happens while good Queen Elizabeth is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee. We saw her on the news today, impeccable as always. “God Save the Queen.” A sixty gun salute. A flying flag. The crowds below and on the balcony the soft peach color of the lace on William's Kate, and the muted stoney brown on the wife of Charles, and his mother, dressed in white - a woman as rare, I think, as the transit of Venus.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 4

4. Sounds, Not Silence

I can hear her zipping up the duffles, and I can hear the rain outside landing quietly on leaves. She leaves today. I can hear the creek outside the window next to the driveway down the bank flowing down the hill. The TV's on. Quiet, though. She doesn't like it loud. That was one of her first sentences - “too loud.” (The firetrucks were, and so was the garbage truck that came to our apartment building and made that beeping sound. And crashing when it dumped the dumpster out.) The train will not be too loud. For her.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 3

3. Sunday Tissues

What's weird about Sundays is that they come every week, but still I'm not ready in the morning when I need to be, and what happens while we're at church, and after that, is never what I thought would happen. Wind blows where it wants to. So I always do need a tissue. It was a good idea in the olden days for women to wear long sleeves to church because then they had someplace to tuck a tissue or a handkerchief and I don't even own a handkerchief so I have to keep my tissues in my purse.

99 Words for 99 Days: June 2

2. On Hold

The weird thing about working at the public library is that there are so many interesting people to notice and hear and help and see and wonder about, but writing about them would probably get me fired. But I will someday. Write about them, I mean. I'll write about the girl already too heavy and too large, and still young enough to be wearing a huge purple flower in her hair to match her dress, and all the questions I have about smart girls and large bodies and the hopefulness of learning how to put a book on hold.