Where does time go?

I've been remiss in my writing, and I have a lot of good excuses. I'm a single, working mother. I'm a high school English teacher with ninety-something bad essays to grade. I broke my ankle and pretended to be under the influence of pain-killers in order to allow myself a little down time. I'm fluctuating between depression, loneliness, and anxiety. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month with any spare moment I have. I'm...well, God, isn't that enough?

In the long run, it doesn't matter. I feel like a pompous ass apologizing for not writing. I'm not Ann Landers.

But I'm not apologizing to anyone out there who might be disappointed in me. I'm apologizing to myself. Because I value writing. Because I enjoy writing. Because writing makes me feel more sane and less alone. And yet I've not put enough value on myself to make time for it. I have to wait for one of these rare teacher work days to actually sit myself down to write. And even now my right eye is sliding towards a pile of rubrics and scantrons that need my attention.

But there were several moments over the past month that I wanted to write.

One Friday, for example, when Fain and I were returning from dinner at the shiny diner on the highway, the moon was large and curved and falling like a white goose feather towards the woods off on the horizon. For the world, it was a goose feather. By the time we were upon the horizon, where the woods no longer permitted a view farther, the moon was resting on top of them, within grappling distance of my boy's little hand. But he had already fallen asleep.

Several days I've wanted to write about the color of the sugar maple leaves along Winstead Avenue. Some of them remind me of peach slices, ripe to the point of falling apart, soaking in a champagne bath. Some of them remind me of girls with black hair who've been running on a windy day. One of those girls might have cheeks the color of a sugar maple in the fall.

And I've wanted to write about the futility of attempting to capture the beauty of the natural world. I've wanted to write about my attempts to persuade my students to take a moment to enjoy the scarlet and gold of the tree just outside my classroom window. Because winter is just around the bend, and we'll wade through so much more time before that tree will be as beautiful again. And, even then, it won't be the same.