It’s been a whirlwind week since I posted about the reading at Pine Manor College last Sunday. I had family in town in upstate New York, but before I had a chance to get there to visit, I learned that my father, who is 82 and has suffered from a slow progressing form of Parkinson’s Disease for quite a few years, had fallen in his room and suffered some serious scrapes (but thankfully no broken bones). I won’t go into the full story here, but my husband and I drove to upstate New York on Friday and had a difficult weekend packed with contradictory events and emotions — we saw relatives we only see once a year or less, but also had to handle a difficult situation with my father. He finally agreed to go to the hospital today (Sunday), and it was discovered that he had become severely dehydrated, and that the dehydration was possibly responsible for the sudden severity of his symptoms (and therefore, for his fall). He is home now and in much better shape than he was a few days ago. But the battle is not over, and as anyone knows who is close to someone with a condition like Parkinson’s, there is no brighter future. There is only the hope that things will not get worse, and that there are more good and happy moments than difficult ones ahead.
And in the middle of all of that, I received another rejection. Sometimes I wish email wasn’t so accessible every moment of the day on the iPhone!
I had some hopes for this particular journal, but it’s a tough one to get into and I wasn’t sure whether the piece I sent to them would work. So although the rejection felt like a bummer, as they always do, it wasn’t totally unexpected. At the same time, it’s enjoyable sometimes to hope that you might be surprised with an acceptance and have something to celebrate.
It’s been a bit tough lately to get myself to continue to send work out. It’s hard to keep up that self-talk that keeps you going and motivated and hoping and excited and enjoying being a writer.
In the grand scheme of things, however, having my dad back home and feeling better is far more important. So for today, for right now, that’s all that really matters.
