My smile rather pasted on, I handed out diapers and wipes, remembering to ask if folks could use baby food, bottles, or a blanket. Plenty could. Their thankful grins and grateful exclamations pattered around me like soft rain. Would have been nice if my attitude were in sync with theirs.

Though happy to be helping out, I wasn’t especially in the mood to work three extra hours. Boy, that sounds whiny, but there you go.

I looked forward to going home, to lounging between my sturdy walls. I failed to imagine guiding a stroller down darkened streets, the chill March evening, a wish for permanence.Once in days gone by, I sat in a dirt patch with a homeless friend. She was enjoying herself, weeding and preparing earth for flowers. She appreciated the roof over her family in a travel trailer.

“In the next life,” she told me, “I’ll have my own real garden.”

During a lull at the table at the fairgrounds someone breezed past, a man in jeans and t-shirt with a stethoscope tucked under one arm. My family’s doctor.

“Hello,” I called, and he came over to shake my hand and ask how it was going. He had been there all day, giving free exams. “The line doesn’t quit,” he said. “But I had to run to the bathroom.”

I let him go. I ought to have stood and saluted, I suppose.

I thought about him a week or so later, while I rode with Tim to the mechanic to pick up my broken-down-now-repaired car. To pay the bill with credit and hope for funds. But not to worry we’d lose our home or anything.

I thought about our doctor and the choices he made in those earlier years: college, med school, loans, sleeplessness. Finally, the ability to contribute to a line that didn’t quit. To people needing warm blankets or their own next-life garden.

I thought maybe you see yourself, at some point, here. I am here. Where life put me. Guess I’ll balance somehow between the overwhelm and the release.

Just then Tim and I slowed at the top of the railroad overpass, and a guy pedaled by in his lane. He looked like our doctor, though hair covered most of his face. We were near the mission and he had no helmet or coat. Having reached the apex, he rode hands-free against the breeze. Half a smile glimmered as we passed.

One of the women who volunteer in my office had commented, months ago, about that loose-looking piece of ceiling. “Don’t you worry that might fall on your head?” she wondered.

“Oh, I think it just looks loose but really isn’t,” I replied. After all, the people before me had been working here for years, and nothing ever fell on them. At least not that they told me.

I’m sure the philosophical, political, and even theological implications I could express, if I took the time to scour them, would be various.

For now, I’ll simply reflect with gratitude. I can certainly come back to attend to work another day, but I must make an exception for the contingency that a ceiling tile happens to fall down and kill me; for in that case, I cannot attend.

Strolling a bit around the booths and events, I toted my camera, figuring I might find artistic shots behind the scenes. It turned out I was too hot to be much inspired.

I got the Norsemen singing. Dan Moore, up front, led a joke bit, “She Gave Me Lefse” (to the tune of “She Gave Me Fever”). Dan goes to our church. I’m sure he doesn’t mind being blogged about in Scandi silliness.

Wilting a bit on the way back to my air-conditioned office/nursing station, I paused to scan for some brilliant photo op. There was only a viking of interest in view. He seemed to hold up well in the 100-or-so degrees, even under his helmet.Did vikings ever face such warm weather? Hm. I guess now we know how one would look. Perhaps he wished for some lefse with ice cream.

Last weekend I decided to try writing things ahead and then utilizing the blog’s “schedule post” feature so they would magically appear, as if predestined.

This has been a trial run but not a trial. I’ve kinda liked it. Schedules in my world are always for flexing, but this one may last a while.

Also this week I finished an essay. After long months of existence in various forms, it became ready to send out. Not that I hadn’t already sent it, receiving rejection upon rejection in return. But now I know it’s better, stronger, having received confirmation from a professional, whose good critiquing service I availed myself to.

Lisa Ohlen Harris is an amazing writer. Her essays have been published in numerous journals (she even knows which journals are respectable enough to warrant a try at publication). She has received recognition in Best American Essays 2009 and Best Spiritual Writing 2010. What I care about, though, is her awesome editing and teaching skill. She even blogs now, too, and you can read her posty expressions here.

Well, I’m off, for a weekend of sleeping in (possibly till 7:00, whoo hoo!), treadmilling, even going outside to breathe deeply near the river, and jotting thoughts in my notebook before the start of another working-at-it, word-filled week.

Though I can sound experienced, I’m not the greatest writer in the world quite yet. Editors aren’t exactly knocking down my door, but they are reading my query letters, articles, and essays.

I’ve read a lot lately at this lady’s helpful, interesting blog. Mridu Khullar has made her successful way into freelance writing at a young age and working from her native India and around the globe. Her (free!) series on query letters reminded me of things I learned eons – well, awhile – ago. It got me sending out queries again. Thanks, Mridu! The first one I sent garnered interest. The second one not so much, but we’ll see how number three fares.

Wishy-washy as always, I can’t land quite yet on one way to pursue this stuff. Creative nonfiction essays still beckon during my early morning hours; I labor over them, hoping to gain real craft. But the literary universe remains elusive, quirky, risky, and at the same time amazing.

More practical is writing for magazines. Times are tough, of course, but paying markets are still out there. I do enjoy coming up with zippy phrases and sharing about things I know or have researched. I want to keep trying for those possible paychecks, maybe finance the literary education, such as it is.

Yesterday my son revealed how skilled he’s become during past months at juggling. Using three tennis balls, James can now keep them all going just about indefinitely. Though he doesn’t feel in complete control of them yet, he’s able to hang onto their momentum. “They keep going, and all I do is stay with them,” he says.

I’m borrowing that metaphor. My old writing days, with children to tend, looked much like tossing one tennis ball, then finally two, up and down and around in sequence. Right now I might be adding the third ball; don’t really know yet. But momentum’s happening. My modest goal has become to send out two things per work week. This week I sent three. One came back already. But I plan to toss it around and up again.

Blogging about this may help me stick to my plan. I’ll let you know. You’re welcome to tell me if you’re juggling momentous-type goals, as well.

Monday morning my alarm failed to wake me. Great start. Then I received a call asking me to work as a temp at a local food-related establishment, Glory Bee. They’re doing a computer-change project and needed people to weigh and measure products in their warehouses, entering the data for digital processes that will make their business hum along without glitches forevermore.

Tuesday I started a couple-week stint of eight-hour days. I won’t even say how long it’s been since I last worked full time. Thankfully, I have good shoes, because I stood on cement floors. It’s a cool place. The smell of honey lends a positive air. Stray honeybees even buzz past, because there are hives out back. The warehouses hum with busy workers. Alongside Kari, a young woman I’d met earlier around Gutenberg, I measured, weighed, and entered data on an amazing array of honey-derived and candle-making products, besides bags and boxes of foodstuffs of all sorts. The people were nice. I guess I do like people. Not a bad thing to remember.

I will remember, too, what I’m learning about my father as I get chances to interview and listen to him. Last Saturday, I joined him in his little boat on Leaburg Reservoir for trout season’s opening day. On the water he’s one happy camper.
We encountered glitches that morning. The motor wouldn’t start. Dad rowed.
Water seeped inside the vessel.
It was 9:00 a.m. I said, “My feet are wet, Dad. You’ve caught your limit already. Let’s leave the rest of the fish for those people.”
We went home, and my feet dried out in time to work at Glory Bee.

I caught nothing but pictures this time. Same as I wrote nothing publishable this past week. But Dad gave me his five trout, and I pulled out of my computer this week and into normalish life for a rather refreshing change. The fish were gone by Sunday. Mmm.