I believe in a lot of things: the calm that can come in quiet thought, the little murmurs of your intuition when you know something is awry and then gently feel your way to that weakened spot—a thin coat of ice on a river, the soft pulsing fontanel of your newborn, the whispered concern of your Jiminy Cricket. “And where has Jiminy gone?” I asked you all that so many times! “Where is Jiminy?” Remember Becca’s big party when we were out of town? Or Jeff’s little bouts of taking what didn’t belong to him? The missing $10 bill. The gum and magazines stolen at Star Market. Or what about the crack in my mother’s hand mirror, the dent in your father’s new Oldsmobile. “Where is Jiminy?” Sometimes, one of you broke down and confessed (often when you were young you did that), and then Jiminy got old, and who knows where he went (Vietnam or a trip to a monastery or a retirement home), and you two were left to fend for yourselves.

“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” you said. “A new dawn. Let the sun shine.” Who knows what you two think of all that now, all grown, with so much of your own lives behind you. I am sure there are many lies I never learned and that your own children have little lies they have told you and their children will tell them. I know there are times in both of your lives when Jiminy just went to hell. I do know that. I do. What human doesn’t know about that? And yet it bothered me those times you didn’t come to me to talk about it, to confide, to let me help you make it better. I like to think that there mixed with Jiminy’s chirping, or whatever it is crickets do, is my voice as well.

“Let it go, Lil,” your father says. “Let go.” He says, “They’re goddamn grown. They’re practically middle-aged, for God’s sake!”

November 28 (once again), 2005
Newton

I feel my mother’s presence today. I do. It’s gray and rainy, low clouds like smoke, and I woke with her on my mind. People are so odd about believing in spiritual encounters, as if it might be crazy or stupid, and yet such a vast population of the world claims religious beliefs that sound like nothing more than a good ghost story, a haunting. My religion acknowledges the power of all the dead, all the souls. There isn’t a gatekeeper or a scorekeeper. You have to do those jobs yourself. You have to decide what it feels like at the end of the day to rest your head and close your eyes.