What We Talk About When We Talk About Hiatus

(Fans of the short-story meister Raymond Carver will recognize a spoof of one of his signature stories in the title of this post.)

Here's a random, desultory report of what I did on my blogatory sabbatical (thank you for your patience):

1. I completed a short story (last night), which was my main purpose for taking leave. It's nearly 3,000 words and is titled "The Willie Mays Chronicles." I suppose I'm satisfied with it, but it's hard to tell. The urge to tinker with it is strong. A September 30 deadline for submission (sub-dom?) to Glimmer Train Stories forced at least temporary closure. I was enormously pleased to get a very encouraging review from GT, an accomplished author-friend. (I can't publish the story here yet, because of contest rules.)

2. I continued to read a whole book about "um" and "ah" and other verbal pause fillers. Can you, um, believe it? Er, yes. It's called Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by Michael Erard. (Thank you, Dr. Erard, for the serial comma in the book's title and consistently in the text.)

3. Spent most of this past Saturday cleaning out years' worth of Stuff on the front porch. Threw toys, tapes, and pillows in the trash; recycled cardboard boxes. Said something like this to our neighbor Joe (who appears in my poem "Mowing the Last Lawn," posted a year ago): "Clearing junk out for my son's wedding next week . . . at the zoo." Joe: "As good a place as any." Something like that. We both laughed.

4. Learned Sunday, at church, through a call from my wife, that those would be the last words Joe and I would ever exchange. He was killed Saturday night by a drunk driver.

5. Later on Sunday, I spied a small white spider sliding downward on invisible thread. It landed on the white wood of the back of a chair in the kitchen. I cupped the spider in a tissue and tossed it outside on the back porch, the porch's green paint already worn away to bare wood (distressed wood is the trendy term) after last summer's paint job. The winters are long and harsh in these parts. There was a time I'd have casually crushed the spider, given how fearful of spiders my little one is. Not this day. No, enough death for one day.

6. I was relieved to have the San Francisco Giants get this dreadful season over and done with. (Bye, bye, Barry.) However, as my friend Steve watched his Mets cascade to calamitous collapse at my house, I was spared the burden of any tension and free from the bonds of hope or expectation.

7. I administered the ministrations of "Doctor Sleep" to an insomniac beloved daughter, invoking the sound of rain on the roof as an incantation.