July 9, 2008 – I suppose many of us want the same thing, to cross to safety, whether is traversing the terrain of fear and pain, or it is simply navigating the complexities of life. We do it in various ways. Some find God and permit him to help cross, others go to therapy, and some find other human beings who will help them get across this space that seems to challenge so many of us in so many different ways, and stands between us and the kind of life we want, the kind of relationships we want to have. Some people give up on the idea.
  Life seems quite indifferent to my safety, sometimes, not slowed or altered by my worries and concerns. This morning, when my computer wouldn’t start and the water went off at 6 a.m., and the animals were without anything to drink in brutal heat, and I am just days away from sorting out all of the damage done by the lightning strike, I confess I went out and sat on the porch and was staring out at nothing when Annie appeared. There are very few times she has ever seen me doing nothing like that, and so she always assumes – usually correctly – that something is wrong.
  I was thinking for a few minutes that there is just too much to do, to keep track of, too much to worry about, too many things to monitor and check and be mindful of, and that is just me, and not my family or friends, not my writing, my photography, a big farm with barns and pipes and dogs and manure and hay and this was just before the four-wheeler broke down again in the woods, and I have to be honest, I nearly sat down and cried. I cannot, I thought, do all this.
   Somebody sent me an e-mail the other day saying they were, for some indefinable reason, worried about me, and I said thanks, but that’s my job. I think at times I liked being worried about, because it always made me feel safer, that that, like fear, was just a feeling too. It’s wrong to do that, and I don’t like it anymore, a sign, I think, that I may finally be growing up.
  You can only make yourself feel safer, and it isn’t a job I want to farm out to anybody else, because that doesn’t work.
   And then Lenore came over and licked my hand and Izzy scurried behind the chair. And I thought of how Warren had spent all of those years helping Helen cross to safety, and I thought of those hours in a hospital testing room wondering if something was wrong with me – it wasn’t  – and I thought of how you cross to safety.
  You take a deep breath, see these feelings as a pond to wade through, and you wade through them. And I called John Sweenor the mechanic and arranged for him to fix the four-wheeler. And we filled buckets with water until a nearby plumber came to get the water partially working.
   I found the plumbing company that installed the water system and they will come tomorrow and I arranged for somebody to haul the remaining ton-and-a-half-of manure away from the cow shelter, and I checked on my hay order and I woke my daughter Emma up and drove to Albany to do “Dog Talk,” and went out into the afternoon sun to take some heat wave photos and didn’t notice I didn’t have a memory card in the camera and came home and walked the dogs and went to dinner with Emma and we talked about writing, and then we saw a recap of the Yankee victory over Tampa Bay. And here I am, summing up the day in the middle of the night, and laughing at myself, and crossing over to another day.
  I have to say, on balance, it was a good day, and I learned a lot from it, and I think I did well with it, and handled what I was supposed to handle. I can’t say it felt safe.
  Like everyone else I want to cross to safety, and I understand this is a trip where you never really arrive at your destination.