I’m sitting on a Continental Airlines flight from Newark to Seattle as I write this, on my way to accomplish two things, one business and the other personal.   For business, I will be meeting up with my fellow poetry editors at LA Review, Tanya and Kelly, so we can go through the pile of poems we’ve been holding until the end of the submission period, and choose the best to fill up the final 10 or so pages we have open.  Do other journals do it this way?  These are all poems that one of the three of us put forward as good enough to publish, and the other two concurred but not strongly enough to take them right then and there.  Although, I have to say, having gone through and read them all on the plane tonight, there are five that I would have taken on the spot.  I’m sure Kelly and Tanya feel the same way about some of them.  The trick will be to choose the ones that we all can agree are the best.  This is where having a lot of respect for the opinions of your fellow editors comes in very handy.  So far we haven’t had a single conflict.  Fingers crossed.

The other reason for my trip is much more complex.  I’m traveling to visit my mother, who is suffering from a truly horrible neurological disease called Progressive Supranuclear Palsey.  It’s robbing her of the muscle control throughout her body, including her eyes, mouth, and throat.  She’s in a wheelchair now and lives in an adult family home where she receives round-the-clock care.  As much as I look forward to spending time with her, I am also filled with angst about her illness.  It is a terrible thing to see how much she’s hurting and how unhappy she is, and to know that there is no cure.  I don’t know how many more times I will see her.  Sometimes I really don’t know what to say to her.  I’m sure no one reading this will be surprised to know that I’ve written a great many poems about her.  I keep trying to write about other things, and I succeed if I’m writing something humorous, but the second I get serious when I’m writing, she somehow finds her way in.

Anyway.  Here’s to going back to my old stomping grounds, getting some good work done, seeing friends, and perhaps finding a tiny bit of emotional closure with mom.