Cocoon

Wow. I came over here to post and I had to sign in. It's been so long since I wrote anything my blog has forgotten me.

I've been in a vacuum. Or perhaps cocoon is more apt. I've been spinning in the silk of daily life, wrapping myself up in the process of restoring my house to its natural order, or disorder, depending on the day.

When Mom and Pappou moved in we shifted Two and Three to rooms downstairs. When my sister Erin came in July and stayed, One gave up his space and moved downstairs to a curtained section of the rec room. When Mom's needs changed, Pappou followed the boys. It was a real guy's dormitory. So this month has been about shifting everyone back upstairs into real rooms with windows. I'm happy to say that project is almost finished, despite losing a significant amount of time to a flu-like plague that felled everyone in the house.

The beauty of cocooning lies in its singular focus. My need for physical order has distracted me from having to unspool the parcels of grief knotted inside me, small, rough packages lurking beneath the beat of my heart. But the hazard of languishing inside that protective batting is all outside noise, positive and negative, gets muffled and ignored. Nonetheless, I was fairly content to stay tucked away inside my domestic shell until my friend Colette Auclair cracked my chrysalis.

Colette and I met through a writing contest. Last year her novel THROWN was nominated for the RWA Golden Heart, which is a big deal in the romance writing world. She wrote me last week to tell me THROWN is going to be published in December as part of a three book deal with Simon and Schuster! Naturally, I was...well, depressed. I had a real moment of I have no mother, I have no book, I have no future--fuck-it, I'm staying in the cocoon. But a little time passed, some light filtered in through the rift and my perspective changed.

Over the years, we've purchased a few butterfly kits for the boys. The larvae fatten up and climb to the top of the cage where they attach themselves and spin a cocoon to await their metamorphosis. It's a violent process as the shimmering alien shells shake and twist, finally splitting to release the new creature inside. Not every butterfly survives and more than a few are injured, but every single larva heeds the natural directive to inch upward.

The need to publish isn't a biological imperative. But  I've created a story, I'm in the middle of revising it, and I think it's earned the right to finish the trek to the top. I've spent a lot of time fattening up and spinning, debating whether I want to muster the energy to write.

I do.

I think it's time to leave my cocoon.