June 2008 (cont.)

It’s been a year of losses. My son, Peter, died a little more than a year ago, on February 9th. Ann, my partner of twenty years, moved out the day I left for Peter’s memorial service.

In the family I grew up in, acknowledging losses of any kind was called “feeling sorry for yourself.” Even knowing better now, I have spent this past year mostly frozen...as the slow progress of the novella and the stoppage of this journal testify to rather eloquently.

Even knowing better, even having enlisted help in facing these losses, during the first year I barely found room to grieve. (I almost wrote breathe, and I could add, “That, too.”)

I’m a writer, though, and a writer writes, whatever else is happening, so through months of the frozen time I slogged through The Very Little Princess.

It should have been an easy story, even a fun one to write. The idea rose out of two different experiences of my childhood, both of them rich.