Once again it has been too long since I have sorted my thoughts in this way. The last time was June. Today it is April. And so much has happened in these months that summary is nearly impossible. They have been months of such remarkable gifts and of such deep loss.

Like all of life, I suppose. Though this time has been more full than most.

The greatest gift? Barb and I have created a new life together in her home in St. Paul.

For me, that involved selling or giving away half of my furniture, half of my clothes, half of my books and leaving the home I’ve lived in and loved for more than twenty years. I left behind a 2,500 square foot house which I’d been rattling around in alone and am now snuggly sharing a 1,400 square foot one. I left behind open spaces and trees and lakes to come into the city. (I have never lived in the city before, have spent my entire life in—or at the edge of—small towns and in far-flung suburbs, had no idea how much I would love the vibrancy of it . . . or whether I would love it at all.) I left behind a community, too, neighbors I had known for many years, a professional network of doctors and dentists and health club, etc., etc., I had carefully cultivated to be close at hand, but am finding another community.

For Barb it involved opening up her safe space for an invasion, clearing out many of her own possessions, adjusting to another presence very much on top of her. (My space in this house is a lovely, open loft, but sounds travel in all that lovely openness.)

The process occupied three months, easily. During that time we often stopped, looked at one another and said, “We knew this was going to be hard. We didn’t know it was going to be this hard.” But by Christmas we had emerged into a state that could be called settled.

Now we are talking about a build-out on the house to make a private space for Barb, a breakfast area and a deck for a grill for me since I love cooking, so we are facing disruption again.

But—and this is an enormous but—we are content with the leap we have made, with the life we are fashioning. And we are both acutely grateful to be moving into this final phase of our lives together.

Life has never felt so rich, so good.

And in the midst of that richness, that goodness are losses.

Norma Fox Mazer, one of my dearest friends, died last fall of a cancerous brain tumor. Such a loss is impossible to describe. Norma and I lived far apart, but we were together intensely for nearly a month out of every year as we both taught at Vermont College of Fine Arts. And between those bi-annual residences, we remained intensely connected. We occasionally kept in touch through long, pre-arranged phone calls, more often through e-mails. We exchanged manuscripts and thoughts and the shifting details of our lives. Each of us lost an adult child during the years of our friendship, and that unasked for sharing deepened the bond. We were completely open to one another.

At the end of December, I retired from eleven years of teaching with Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was a part-time job but a full-heart commitment. Watching our students’ lives and work grow has brought me as much satisfaction as any I can count from my own writing. And being part of that passionate, talented, loving faculty has changed who I am. It gave me a solid place in a real community, something that doesn’t come easily for us solitary writers.

I was the first Faculty Chair for our MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and I will always consider that stellar program to be, in some small part, mine. And yet I am grateful for the space that has opened in my life with stepping away.

And the most recent loss . . . our sweet Sunshine died. He was a dog. Only that. A black-and-tan cavalier King Charles spaniel. His full name was Sunshine’n'Shadow, but he came to Sunshine, Sunny, Sunbear, he (he was the only male in the house, so he knew that all male pronouns referred to him) and to the sound of my chopping anything at all in the kitchen. He was only seven years old and still full of enthusiasm for life and food and balls to be chased, but his heart wasn’t as powerful as his enthusiasm.

Now we’re left with sweet Dawn, three years old, who doesn’t quite know how to be a dog without her companion. And with a gaping hole in all of our lives.

Barb and I say to one another daily, “No . . . we don’t need to get another dog for Dawn. We don’t!” And we take her to the dog park and for extra walks and for play dates with a terrier cousin. And her grieving, her disorientation, and ours, seems to ease . . . slowly . . . slowly.

The greatest risk in this life it seems—and the only hope—is allowing ourselves to love.

I keep a photo of Norma taped to my computer and one on a cupboard door in the kitchen. I have a photo of all the VCFA faculty on the wall where I see it whenever I glance up from the screen. And Barb and I are building an area in the downstairs hallway for pictures of all our loved and lost pets.

I am 71 years old—I find myself very aware of my age these days—and starting my life new.

I am 71 years old and part of my substance is grief.

And the spring sunshine fills me with gratitude!