"The Sadness of Saying Thank You"

I suddenly remembered that can spice this up with colored font as well...

It's taken a little bit of time, but I've reached some kind of plateau. I actually don't know what kind of metaphor I would use to help describe what I'm meaning, and maybe that's the joy of just writing the truth. Anyway, I stayed up rather late last night trying to finish reading that (annoying) book by Foer and then, woke early because I was sure that I had scheduled an appointment before class. Arriving a minute or two late for the appointment, I met the advisor and told her my name.

"Well, I don't have you on my schedule," she said. "I've got a Rachel coming in first thing."

This wasn't the first time I've arrived at this woman's office early on a morning, only to find out that I'd made some mistake. This time, my this-week Tuesday was mixed up with my next-week Tuesday. Not such a tragedy, since I still had about 30 pages left to read and only an hour before class. In any case, I again became aware of the tendency I have to mesh and overlap things in my mind and my schedule....

This afternoon, I returned home to find a thick envelope full of photographs from my mom. Many of the new baby--Kaz--, my sister and brother-in-law, mom, and my other nephew, Judah. One shows Judah sitting proudly on the piano chair by himself, playing. I suspect that he climbed up there himself--a skill he learned while I was home. It's strange to think now of my summer and the many seemingly repetitive moments I spent doing something--such as turning pages in piano books and holding the key-cover back so that Judah wouldn't pull it onto his fingers. It's even stranger to compare those moments with now--with the times that I will sit at my desk and hope for the brightness of some kind of joyous writing or reading moment. Looking at those photos and reading the small note that was enclosed--"Laurel said she misses you, and I do too,"--saddened me.

In one of my classes, we talked about kinds of sadness and each person wrote down three kinds that they could think of off of the top of their heads. One of mine was "Sadness of saying thank you." This was something that I tried to express to a friend of mine in a letter long ago. Maybe it doesn't make sense--and it would seem, perhaps, that anything you look at could be turned into some kind of sadness, if you wanted it to be--; but, I understand this kind of sadness to be what one feels when all he/she can say to someone is "Thank you," though a thousand things more are meant in those two words.

I've felt this way many times in life--and for some reason, I always feel a kind of regret attached to it. Perhaps, more than regret, it is a feeling of nostalgia and for the inability to capture that feeling in words or pictures. Lately too, even looking at the photos of Judah and recalling those brief moments when we were alone--when he would tear through (though not literally tearing pages) of my poetry books, or when he would let me put my sunglasses on him because he knew I thought it was funny, or when he couldn't stop laughing as I walked a silly walk...

Many more memories to come, I should hope.

Perhaps there's no sense in feeling sad about these things.