Auspicion

Inauspicious minute to begin a blog, something i never considered doing anyway. But here we are and so it shall be.

Minus one day but nearly three years later, I'm going to write again. (Writing again outside daily writing for a living, that is.) This morning, I heard Sally Regenhard, the mother of a fireman I knew, crying on NPR. Last night, my mentor and former boss and now fine friend of sorts left for Iraq, again. "Leaving my friend," he wrote in a text message, rendering my heart inoperable for a few intakes of breath. He was on a plane, returning to a place where he feels frightened and exhausted every day, not ready to hustle his way again for months, evading hating eyes and loud bomblike sounds.

And I sit in an office, just off New York City, readying myself for the interview this evening with a 25-year-old welfare "mother" who cares for her 5 younger brothers and sister, since their mother died in May from AIDS. The father, it seems, has a mysteriously disabled arm and leg (since his youth in Puerto Rico), and one daughter, 17, has two babies. The family pays $1,675 a month for rent, with social services taking on $1,200 of it. One full-time job. Seven children. An absent father and a dead mother. And one born-again 25-year-old saying that "God is on our side."

Right now, only words are on mine.