I'm distracted by blood on the counter

1.  Re-caulk the sink.

2.  Replace garbage disposal.

3.  Repaint walls.  

I’m trying to make notes for myself about what to repair or replace before we put the house on the market.  I write down the things the tenant mentions, but I’m distracted by blood on the counter. 

This house is haunted for me.  

It’s 2004 and I’m cooking dinner.  Buddy is on a business trip in New York.  As soon as the kids and I walk in the door Audrey throws off her sundress and starts dancing around the living room.  Grant is with me in the kitchen.  He has just learned to walk and he gets into everything.  

We are a young family on the cusp of everything.  I have recently started a career job with a great company.  Buddy is getting his MBA at a prestigious school. 

Grant reaches into the garbage can and pulls out a soup can.  The edges are sharp so I take it from him and as I do he shrieks.  I pick him up and take him to the sink.  It’s pouring blood.  It’s going to need stitches.  I press a clean dishcloth against the cut and balance Grant on one hip as I turn off the stove.  Then with my one free hand I drop Audrey’s dress over her head.  

Thank God for summer and sundresses.  

I’m going to need help driving to the hospital.  I go to the neighbor who has the highest radio of adults:children.  Thank God Wayne is home and is available to drive us to the emergency room.  

The four of us sit in shiny plastic chairs in the ER waiting room for hours.  I tell Wayne he can go on home but he entertains Audrey while I hold Grant, who has drifted off to sleep.  At first I worry that he’s going into shock or something but by this point it’s after his bedtime and he’s just plain tired.  

When we are called back for Grant’s stitches they apply topical anesthesia and begin threading the stitches through his finger.  

And he sleeps through the entire process.  

I am in awe of my baby boy’s constitution.  His fascination with all things sharp and shiny.  His tolerance for pain.  His propensity for sudden and deep slumber.  

Tonight I can cradle him head to foot in my arms.  I am grateful that injury, rescue and healing can all happen in the shelter of my wingspan.  

But, he is growing.  

My tenant and I ascend the stairs.  “I’ve shampooed the carpet every year but you might want to replace it now,” she says.

The carpet does look worn.  

We are standing on the carpet for the first time ever.  Construction on our new house is complete and we’re doing the final walk through with the builder.  We are brand new parents.  Audrey is just four weeks old.  

And we are brand new home owners.  

And then, our brand new baby throws up on our brand new carpet.  I hand Buddy a wet wipe and he drops to his knees and cleans it up.  Shocked and embarrassed, we apologize to the builder.  

He laughs.  “It’s your carpet now!” he says.  

Buddy and I look at each other and laugh.  Then I start to tear up.  It is our carpet.  It is our house.  It is our baby.  

We are proud.  

We are happy.  

And in a secret corner of my heart I worry that we are not worthy of being entrusted with carpeting or a mortgage or a baby. 

I am standing in the middle of this place which was once was my house and still is, sort of, but hasn’t been mine for years. 

Maybe it never was.  

I drive away and look at 942 Baines Street in my rearview mirror.  It looks so different than the day we moved in fourteen years ago.  

So so different than it did fourteen years ago.  

Then everything was new.  Everything worked.  The emphasis was on potential.  

When I lived here I could cradle my life in my wingspan.  

And then it grew.  

It grew and I couldn’t protect it.  

I couldn't protect it and couldn’t control it.    

And now …

The garbage disposal is broken.  The carpet is worn.  The walls need to be repainted.

And we are divorced.  We live on different continents.  Our babies fly as unaccompanied minors around the world so they can have a relationship with both of us.

And yet …

She still loves to dance in the living room after school.

Every night he falls into a deep and heavy, heavy slumber..


And still ...  

In a secret corner of my heart I worry that we were not worthy of being entrusted with carpeting or a mortgage or a baby.  

A Tale of Two Houses

Sometimes life teaches us an important lesson and just like that we hear pieces falling into place and clicking.

Woossshhhhh. 
 

Click.  Click.  Click. 

And suddenly, something really important makes sense. 

On January 17, 1995 pieces fell OUT of their place in Kobe, Japan.  At 5:46am that morning, the residents of Kobe experienced one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history.  A 7-point earthquake rocked the city for 20 seconds and when the shaking was over, 6,000 people were dead and over 150,000 buildings and homes had toppled. 

At the time I was a student at Chiba University, a safe 400 miles to the north.  We didn’t feel a thing in Chiba.  Except, of course, we felt terrible.  So some friends from my church and I went down to Kobe to help with the relief efforts during our spring break that year. 

We slept on the floor of a church at night and during the day we helped people dig through the dusty rubble of their houses, searching for their belongings. Or we helped them move from a damaged home into one that had survived the quake intact.  Or we distributed things like toothbrushes and hand cream.  I remember very few people wanted the toothbrushes and the hand cream.  What they wanted were tarps. Tarps to cover a hole in their roof, or to protect their belongings that they had gathered in a pile on the street.  That blue plastic fabric was the most valuable commodity in Kobe in the spring of 1995.

One day I got a new assignment.  An architect from the U.S. had arrived and he was surveying homes and assessing the damage.  He didn’t speak Japanese so I was assigned to be his interpreter for the day. 

We had two houses on the schedule that day.  The first one was in a suburb on the eastern edge of the city.  To me it looked like it hadn’t suffered much damage during the quake.  The windows were broken and some tiles in the bathroom had fallen down and the interior walls had crumbled in some places.  But overall it looked like a few trips to the Home Depot might be enough to fix this house back up.

The architect wasn't a big talker, which made my job that day pretty easy.  He walked around the house thoughtfully, snapping pictures and making notes for himself on a clipboard.

I looked back at the house as we drove away and thought that this family was relatively lucky.  I had seen worse damage, much much worse.

Like, for example, the next house we visited.

It was a single family home in the heart of the city.  It was in bad shape.  All of the external and internal stucco had been shaken off during the quake, rendering the house a carcass of beams.  To make matters worse it was leaning on the house next to it, like an emaciated AIDS patient slumped against a hospital hallway.  I stood in the striped sunlight in what had once been the kitchen and thought to myself that this house was hopeless.   

Then the architect and I went back to the church, where he gave the staff his assessments. 

He reported that the first house was in fact damaged beyond repair and would need to be razed.  The second house, however, could be repaired with a fairly simple procedure.  The beams, he said, could be righted again with a ratchet and a steel band.  Once they had been righted, they would need to be nailed back in that position, then stucco could be reapplied and the house would be livable again.    

I had one of those terrible moments as an interpreter when you’re pretty sure you’re saying the exactly wrong thing.  And this can happen fairly easily with German and Japanese, because the verb often comes at the end of the sentence, and the interpreter has to guess what the verb will be and then do an internal check when the verb actually does come and make sure the guess was right. 

Fortunately the architect was also showing the staff the pictures and they were as confused as I was.  They questioned him. 

“The first house, the one that looks pretty much okay, has to be torn down?  And the second one, this bare bones house that’s leaning on the house next door, can be fixed easily?” 

The architect nodded yes.  And then he said something that made it all make sense.  It was something that I had completely overlooked as we visited the houses earlier that day.  It wasn't even on my radar.  Something I never even thought to check. 

It was the foundations, he explained. 

The foundation on the first house was cracked and there was no way to fix that.  When the foundation is cracked the structure is going to fall down.  It just is.  No amount of glass and tile and paint will help.  It’s going to fall in. 

The foundation on the second house, he said, was intact.  While the structure on top of it appears to be hopelessly ruined, it wasn’t.  Because the foundation was undamaged, the structure on top of it could be salvaged with minimal effort. 

The foundation. 

That was what mattered. 

Of course. 

Woosssshhhhh.

Click.

Click.

Click. 

 

I Think This One is About Pathways

I know the sermon is brilliant, they always are, and I really want to listen to it.  But I can't.  I'm not sure why.

He is snuggled on my right.  He puts his head in my lap and runs his fingernail along the golden cross embossed on the hymnal in the rack in front of us.  He rolls his head back and mouths "I'm bored" to me. 

I smile and nod, as mothers have done throughout the ages.  Somewhere out there in the universe is a giant cosmic crucifix, carved by the heads of billions and billions of nodding mothers, as we quietly admonished our children in church. 

"Yes, I know you're bored." 

"No, you cannot play with my cell phone." 

It is our own silent sign of the cross.

She leans her head against my shoulder, subconsciously asserting her equal right to my affection.  She too is bored and in her sleepy trance she traces her favorite scar, the 3-inch gash that traverses my forearm, where I had a mole biopsied when she was 18 months old.  The diagnosis was "atypical mole", which is your body's foreshadowy way of saying "not cancer yet." 

Atypical mole...  Third grade vocabulary.  Somehow I at least expected a diagnosis in Latin. 

Memento mori.  Memento vivere.

That is the call from this ravine that runs across my arm.  Remember that you will die.  Remember to live.

Baby Henry is two rows in front of us and is playing with his father's face as we begin to pray. 

"Our Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be Your name." 

Henry pats his father's cheeks and then giggles as his dad playfully retaliates by biting his fingers and the two of them laugh softly, a happy undercurrent carrying our prayers.  And it occurs to me how it's all the same thing, what we're doing and what Henry is doing.  We are all wanting our father's attention.  I wonder if what Henry is experiencing with his father right now is priming the pathways in his soul to one day understand how much his Creator loves him.  Or perhaps it's the other way around. 

And I guess it doesn't really matter.

It's over and as I'm caught in the undertow of worshipers flowing out of the sanctuary I'm not sure what I got out of the service really, other than maybe something about river beds and currents. 

I walk out into the parking lot and this is what I see, painted in clouds.

 



What I see is  a question mark.  But I wonder - is that what you saw?

Ordinary Perfection

It was a perfectly ordinary Monday night.  The air was just cool enough to be invigorating.  The spring breeze brushed my hair against my ear, and I heard whispers of pastels and peace.  Cooper and I were out for an evening stroll and all was well with us and with the world.

Ordinary perfection.

But as we were walking back to the house Cooper did something unusual.  He stopped in his tracks and slowly craned his head around to look behind us.  I hadn't heard a car or anything so I looked back to see what had gotten his attention.

It was a wild coyote.

 

He was standing in the middle of the road, looking at us.  Hungrily, I might add.  

I started to walk ahead calmly.  I looked back and saw the coyote was following us.  I sped up and so did he.  

That's when I let go of Cooper's leash and told him to run home.  He's faster than me and I figured he was the main attraction anyway.  Cooper took off.  

I started running too.  I looked over my shoulder and saw that the coyote was coming after me.  Thank God I made it home before I found out who was faster - the coyote or me.

Frantically, I opened the back door and Cooper and I zoomed into the kitchen like two bullets hitting a Manhattan phone book.  Grant was making his lunch for tomorrow and Audrey was putting her hair up in pink sponge rollers.  I stood doubled over the counter, panting and dripping sweat.  

"What HAPPENED?" Audrey asked.

"Is this mayonnaise expired?" Grant asked.  

"There.  Was.  A.  Coyote.  I.  Think."  I gasped.  Audrey rushed to hug me.  Grant ran into the backyard to see if he could catch a glimpse of the coyote.  He didn't.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I recovered my breath I sent a similar text message to a few friends and neighbors.

Their responses were very different, which is what I love about all the people in my life.

My neighbor responded:
"Apparently they are all over...they can be sneaky...pretty cool, though, right?"  (It's nice to have people in your life who remind you that "scary" and "pretty cool" are just twins separated at birth.)

My BFF said:
"Oh jeez!  We have no coyotes in Califorina.  Just sayin"  (She knows that I'm too lazy to do a google search and find out that there are actually MORE coyotes in California than in Tennessee.)

My man said:
"Wha???  Are you okay???"  (So sweet!  Clearly I was fine because I was texting but still his first reaction was to make sure I was okay.  Love that guy.)

Another friend said:
"You turned yourself into prey when you started running."  (Good point.  But I don't think I could have stopped myself.  I mean, who could?  Well, except for maybe Grant, who ran towards the danger.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think I'll always remember that night.  Partly because it's the night Cooper and I didn't get killed by a coyote. 

But more than that ...

It was the night when the wild and the domesticated co-existed, sort of.    The night when the lines between scary and "pretty cool" blurred.  The night when the the winds blew pastels and peace one minute, and the next they carried the scent of prey to the hunter. 

It was the night when the ordinary and the extraordinary were both perfect in their own sacred way.

 

A blog about blogging

A couple of weeks ago while we were in Beijing I had a really hard moment.  Emotions were running high and the tears were flowing.  I retreated to my room because that's what I do.  In my moments of greatest stress I retreat into myself. 

And I worked my way out of myself and out of the room by writing. 

That's another thing I do in my moments of greatest stress.

By writing about what was happening, I was able to see that event for what it really was.  I was able to see my role in things.  I was able to see my way out. 

The result was a post that some of you might have seen.  It was on my blog for a few hours.  I had a conclusion in the blog and I thought it was a positive one, but I went through some prickly places on the way to the conclusion. 

The trouble is, someone in my life who is important to me saw only the prickly places and not the positive conclusion.  And it hurt him.  And he let me know.

It gave me pause.  The Downtown Diner is my restaurant.  I get to cook whatever I want here.  If someone doesn't like the food they don't have to eat here. 

And yet, I had posted something that hurt someone.  And I wasn't sure how I felt about that.  I wasn't sure if it's more important to me to express myself freely on my blog, or if I have an obligation to be respectful of people here. 

Am I free to write whatever I want as long as it is healing to me, even if it in turn hurts someone else?

Again, the Downtown Diner is my restaurant, so I have to make this decision. 

So, I took the post down.  Because I want the Diner to be a place where people feel safe and treasured and respected.  I want my heart to be all of that too.

Therapy.  It was therapeutic for me to write it, but posting it to my blog is less important.  That piece of prose can always live as an entry in my journal, or perhaps as a chapter in the book I publish one day.  Under a pseudonym, naturally. 

On a side note, I believe that as we communicate in the digital world we are leaving traces of ourselves that one day our great great great grandchildren will sift through to figure out who we were.  Even the communication that we believe is private today, like our emails and texts and messages on online dating websites - I'm pretty sure our progeny is going to have access to all of that. 

Perhaps we're no different than our ancestors who threw a whiskey bottle down the hole in the outhouse thinking it was gone forever, their little secret.  But now decades later we do archaeological digs on that spot and we unearth the secrets of the past. 

The kids and I found this antique medicine bottle at a construction site in the 12th South area. 

I predict our great grands will do the same thing. 

To assume my descendants will do research about me seems presumptuous, but if they do, I hope they will look at the world I held private and the aspects of it that I put out in public, and see that I was consistently authentic and also that I used good judgment. 

I doubt they will say that I never hurt anyone.  But I hope they will see that any pain I inflicted was unintentional, or that the hurt served a higher purpose and was not just a selfish catharsis. 

I would be honored if they decided to create a space like The Downtown Diner in their lives.  A place where people are honest and real with each other, and yet balance that against being fair and caring and kind with one another. 

That's a legacy I'd be proud of. 

Love grows best in houses just like this

This morning I was washing a dish and Grant needed to throw something in the garbage can, which was in the cabinet just in front of me.  So I turned off the water and held the soapy dish in mid air above the sink, while he
   ever
        so
             slowly
                    threw       away    
                                            
                                                  the   paper
                                               
                                                             towel. 


It felt like forever.

That's when Audrey pushed me gently from the side so she could get access to the microwave to heat up a breakfast sandwich.

And that was the moment when I realized that although we have 960 square feet in this house, my whole entire family was standing on 4 square feet of it. 

All of us. 

And then, the dog walked over just to see what was going on. 

For almost three years we've been living in a 2BR/1BA house.  You might think it's not such a big deal for three people to share one bathroom.  But there was this one Saturday evening when Grant flushed my hot rollers down our one single toilet.  Late on a Saturday night.  It's hard to get a plumber to come out on a Sunday. 

It's also hard to do without your one single toilet until you can get a plumber to come out on a Sunday.

Sometimes when I tell this story people ask me how Grant managed to flush my hot rollers down the toilet.  These people know my son, so I assume the question is a rhetorical one. 

A few times every day I think to myself that I need to get a bigger place when our lease runs out in July. 

And yet every year in May I look around at the real estate market to see what's available.

And then I look around our cozy little house.

And then I sign that lease again, one more time.  Swearing to myself that it's only for one more year.

There's a song by Garth Brooks called "Love Grows Best in Small Houses".  And thanks to this house, I know he's right.

But you know, love grows best in little houses,
With fewer walls to separate,
Where you eat and sleep so close together.
You can't help but communicate,
Oh, and if we had more room between us, think of all we'd miss.
Love grows best, in houses just like this.

The Club None of Us Wanted to Join

“When you get divorced you become a spokesperson for the club none of us wanted to join.”

That’s what one of my friends told me when I got divorced.  He predicted that people would start coming to me talking about what it’s like to be divorced, asking questions about the process, asking for recommendations for divorce lawyers, asking if it’s worth it to put your children and your family through all of that. 

And I thought to myself that the club would be better off electing me the club treasurer than the club spokesperson.

 

Because I have no clue what to say, club.  Really, no clue. 

Can I tell you something?  And let's pretend it's relevant, but really I just want to tell you.  My sister?  She goes straight to the source.  No spokesperson required. 

 

Let's see, back to our topic.  Over time I found there was truth to my friend’s assertion.  Some people did come to me with questions like that. 

 

But if you keep your radio tuned to only one frequency you’re only going to pick up one channel. 

 

I turned the dial around and I realized that people were not only opening up to me about marital issues, they were coming to me about all kinds of things. 

 

Caring for their parents, grieving their dog’s death, trying to conceive a baby, worrying about their kids’ college fund, stressing over their children’s grades, waiting for the results of a biopsy, staying overnight in the hospital with a loved one, burying a brother…

I’m not sure what triggered this exactly.  It might have been my divorce.  It might have been the fact that I was tuning my dial into them and listening.  Maybe people can tell that because I’ve been through the fire of a divorce I won’t judge them for whatever they’re going through.  Maybe they sense that a chord in me will sound along with theirs. 

Whatever the reason, I found that my friend was right, I did become a spokesperson.  But it was for a different club, one I’ve always wanted to join. 

It is the Club of Being Real With Each Other. 

I’m Melanie Gao, and I’m here to take your questions. 

 

 

 

More Stories About Nothing

This is another story about my obsession with the song Everlong by Foo Fighters.  I listen to it almost every morning as part of my morning quiet time and as a result, it's become the theme song for my life. 

Hello
I've waited here for you
Everlong

This is a story about a grey sweater.  I flew to Silicon Valley to do some training last week and I stayed with my BFF and when I arrived we started talking about the outfits I was planning to wear during training and I told her I couldn’t wear my grey sweater tomorrow because it smelled a little too much like planes and rental cars and me, so Pat put my sweater in the washer. 

The next morning I found a grey sweater in her closet and I borrowed it since mine wasn’t dry yet. 

I left the house before she got up but when I returned in the evening she was just coming home too and she hugged me in the driveway, then she backed away and said, “Is that my grey sweater?”  I looked down and remembered that yes, yes it was and she hugged me again and said, “I love that you would borrow my sweater without asking!” 

And I found myself surrounded by not one but two layers of warmth and softness.

Tonight
I throw myself into
And out of the red
Out of her head she sang

This is a story about liquid oxygen.  The kids and I flew to Beijing for Chinese New Year and Grant was feeling congested in the plane so we bought a couple of holistic remedies from the duty free magazine. 

One was a small bottle of oxygen drops that you can put in your water and the bottle claims that it hydrates and helps prevent jet lag.  Grant and I were in.  As we opened the bottle, Audrey looked at me with great skepticism and asked what the ingredients were.  I read the bottle, “Water, hydrogen peroxide, sodium chloride...“  She nodded.  “Yeah, and what’s missing there?” 

I looked at Grant and he said, “Oxygen is everywhere, they probably don’t need to add it.”  I nodded. 

And I pointed out that the bottle was a nice blue glass bottle and Grant noted that the needle dropper was also made out of glass and we concluded that that was a hallmark of quality pharmaceuticals.

And we dropped 10 drops each into our water bottles.

And I felt myself snuggled between my outspoken and critical-thinking daughter and my faith-filled and adventurous son.   

Breathe out
So I can breathe you in
Hold you in

This is a story about a cup of coffee that I never got.  There is a special man in my life now and if someone has a better word than “boyfriend” would you please give it to me because I’m no longer twelve and need a better word than “boyfriend” and I don’t like “partner”. 

And he lives far away so we have to make great efforts to see each other in person and recently he re-routed some of his business travel so he could be in Nashville when the kids and I returned - fully oxygenated, mind you - from China so that he could give us a hug and a tray full of Starbucks before he made his way east and home. 

But we got way-laid on the way from China and I will spare you my sob story of why but the net effect was that we were not in Nashville to receive the coffee or the hugs and my guy (we’ll settle for that for now) made his way east before we got to see him.  And I was terribly disappointed and so was he but as we texted later that night we came to an important realization together, which is that we are not in control of how things work out and God always has plans that are bigger and better than the ones we make and if we keep filling our lives with our own plans we don’t leave any space for God to do his work. 

And so we prayed together over FaceTime and thanked God for the space he had just created in our lives, and we asked him to do His work there. 

And although he and I were separated by a thousand miles of customs and immigrations and security and roller boards and gate agents and pretzels and diet Sprites and and baggage carousels, I have never felt so close to my guy. 

And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again

These were stories about nothing and everything.  And you read them, which means you are a part of my everything.  Thank you for being here with me.   

The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You gotta promise not to stop when I say when I say when



Happy New Year from the Gaos

 Dear Friends,

We want to thank you for being with us as we journeyed through 2013.  

I really mean that.  You were with us.  And we are grateful for that.  

You saw us be bold in 2013.

You saw us be beautiful.

You watched as we wandered the globe.  

(Some of you tracked our every step using Find Your Friends. It's all good.)

But, let's be honest.  You also saw us fall flat on our face in 2013.

You saw us struggle.

You saw us when we were afraid.

Some of you heard us yelling at each other.  

We're sorry about all the yelling.

(I just whispered that apology.  It felt appropriate.  In a too-little-too-late kind of way.)

Throughout the year, you were with us.  When we needed you, you showed up. 

When we called, you came.

You changed my tire at 6:30am.

You picked my kids up when I was stuck in traffic.

You helped me turn off my smoke alarm at midnight.

You healed my "sports" injury.

You showed up.

Via skype late at night.  

A quick text, first thing in the morning.  ("OMG it is freezing out there!  This is not why I moved to the South!!") 

The early morning coffee dates. ("Okay, how are we going to get through this week?")

The sweet cards and letters.

 The heartfelt conversations over drinks on my deck in the evening in the summertime. 

Sometimes what you did was smile at us, at a moment when we really needed to remember that there are good things in the world.  

The point is, you were there.  

We were never alone this year, and neither were you.  

We did 2013 together.  

And we love you for that.  

We can't wait to see what 2014 holds for us.  All of us.  Us.  You.  All of us.

Full speed ahead.  

Pedal to the metal.  

Let's go get this thing stuck.  

What do you say?

(It really is going absolutely perfectly.  I know you know that.)

the post that wrote itself

People told me not to blink.  They said one day I would wake up and she'd be in college and I'd wonder where the time went. 

None of that has been true for me.

When I think back on this day, it feels like an eternity ago.

Buddy took that picture when Audrey was four hours old.  Do you see that smile?  It's real.  She came out, she smiled at us, and then she faded back into a distant infant cloud and didn't peek through it again until she was about six weeks old.

But she came out and in those first hours she smiled at us.  First order of business.

Tonight we'll celebrate her 13th birthday with a few of her closest friends.  We're either going to be at the mall or else I'm taking the girls to a restaurant for a nice dinner.  It's hard to say right now. 

Because we haven't decided yet. 

Because the party is still 10 hours away. 

And because she is my daughter. 

If each day is a grain of sand, I am feeling the weight of this one in my palm.  So heavy. 

I don't know why. 

I wish I knew where I'm going with this post.  I wanted it to be a touching tribute to my daughter and her debut into the world as a teenager. 

And now it's about me and sand.  Sand?  Seriously, sand?  Where did the sand come from? 

I wanted this post to be funny and independent and radiant and smart, like Audrey. 

But, I can't seem to make it cooperate.  

Aren't you asking yourself right now what my point is?  Because I sure am.

Can I tell you something?  About a year ago, when she hugged me the top of her head used to fit right under my chin.  It doesn't anymore.  The top of her head is level with my mouth now.  Every morning I hug her and I push her head back down, hoping I can somehow get it to fit under my chin.  But it never does.  It doesn't cooperate any better than this post does.

It seems to have a mind of its own.  Non-plussed by what I want.  It is writing itself. 

And it occurs to me that I have no choice but to let it go out into the world.... 

A few minutes ago I was the author of this blog. 

And now, I am just the one who's going to hit that little orange box in the top corner that says "Publish".