dear hilary,

In TinkerCreak, Dillard writes how her exploring/looking is her "leisure as well as her work."  She says that it is a "fierce game she has joined because it is being played anyway."  Like motherhood, I think. (I grab at any new description.)  Being Ives' mum seems like a fierce game.  A game in which the "pay offs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment" are generally, instead, invisible and internal.  In the light blasts: his waking, his speech, his shoulders.  He touches his forehead to the table when Thom prays before we eat.  Like a prostrating muslim.  He holds both our hands and says amen.  I wonder what he is learning.  I hope that ceremony matters, that eating is done in communion, that within a day there are times of pause - breaks in sight.  It is hard to know - the fierce game is a long one.

all my love, nikaela