anticipatory

Back in Montpelier again, for what will be the longest stretch of time I've been away from home on my own. I drove in as snow picked up, arriving just before dark. It's quiet here, soft stillness.

Last night, a call with a new acquaintance. We have people in common, so there is a sense of closeness. At times, I catch myself feeling guarded, a bit detached, but I don't know why. We agree to talk again, even to work on something together. It's hard to imagine starting anything new for the foreseeable future, but I try to stay receptive to possibility.

Earlier in the week, I watched Z talk about their work in an awards ceremony. It's hard to describe the love and pride and admiration I felt listening to the ways in which they're making meaning of identity, inheritance, absence, grief. Creating something from the detritus of what has been left to them. It leaves me breathless.

It seems strange to describe myself as still emerging from the years of isolation, but I feel it in stages, I think. Layers falling away slowly, shedding skin. There is the pressure to rush on, lean in, to pretend that there has ever been a “normal” to return to, to be in it, not only to pick up where we left off, but to make up for all the lost time. But surely, new paths have opened in our absence? Surely we have learned something from our hibernations? About ambition, connection, care? About how intimately entwined we are in the lives of others and what that might require of us?

Today will be one of my first “public” appearances in this new role. I'll address a new group of students and faculty about my plans, my hopes for my work with and for them. I'll try to convey my enthusiasm, excitement. The way I've been holding them in mind. I'm open to the new, to the unknown, in ways I've not been before. Less fearful, more porous. Perhaps it is a readiness to let my life move me, to let it unfold without trying to anticipate or control. To feel my feelings, one might say. To know what I can know.