What did I know about anything?

I was in Spokane this past weekend, visiting with Henry for Family Weekend at his university. It was fall in Spokane, and the colors were brilliant.

I don't know what I felt -- joy, certainly, in seeing my son again, but there was something else, something faint and melancholy and in-between.

You know very well what it is. Was. That lonely feeling. There's not much time between now and then. I remember what it felt like, to be so new.

The hotel where I stayed had paper-thin walls. I drifted toward them in the morning, a ghost with a toothbrush I held still in my mouth, breath held, the lovers on the other side breath less.

It only takes a few trees on fire, sun-dappled leaves, just so, to make me eighteen again and wistful. The word hesitant. The word restless. The word yearn.

I'm a mother now, watching my son move forward.

Here's a poem that I can't get out of my mind.


The Five Spot

There’s always a lesson to be learned,
whether in a hotel bar
or over tea in a teahouse,
no matter which way it goes,
for you or against,
what you want to hear or what you don’t.

Seeing Roland Kirk, for example,
with two then three saxophones
in his mouth at once
and a kazoo, no less,
hanging from his neck at the ready.

Even in my youth I saw
this not as a lesson in keeping busy
with one thing or another,
but as a joyous impossible lesson
in how to do it all at once,

pleasing and displeasing yourself
with harmony here and discord there.
But what else did I know
as the waitress lit the candle
on my round table in the dark?
What did I know about anything?

Billy Collins