this too shall pass?

It's that time of year again- the week before finals, when papers are due and all those things you have been putting off suddenly become unavoidable. As usual, I am not handling it with very much grace. The difference this year is that I have Robb by my side, being patient and kind and helpful. This leads me to hope a couple of different things:
a) that I live up to his expectations
b) that I can someday repay him for his hours of sitting with me while I do homework
and
c) that I actually pass these courses so that his efforts and time will not have been in vain.
I may not be able to write these papers and take these tests for my own good, but I can definitely do them for Robb's sake.

Get behind me, Santa!

Our cat Fennel is sitting on my lap right now, purring furiously. She is calm for once because she got worn out chasing the vacuum cleaner and mop. It's amazing how easily entertained she is- she will run around for hours after a piece of string or paper.
I don't quite understand it, but having Fennel curled up purring in my lap is one of the best antidotes to the winter blues that I have found so far. Second only to sitting in my best beloved's arms.
Listening to Sufjan's Christmas albums twice through in one day doesn't hurt, either.

those winter sundays

We read a Robert Hayden poem today in class that ended with these lines:

"What did I know, what did I know

Of love's austere and lonely offices?"

Love's offices can indeed be unlovely, but we undertake them with glad hearts because they are for a beloved. This is the quieter side of parenthood. This is inconvenient services rendered to loved ones. This is the side of love I do not truly know yet.

I hope that God cannot get lonely, because if he could he would certainly have cause to. His offices are both austere and lonely much of the time- or at least to our human minds they must seem so.

218 to go.

Tomorrow Robb and I celebrate two months of engagement. Two down, seven to go.
This in-between state is actually much more difficult than I ever could have anticipated. We are truly committed to one another and know that the rest of our lives will be spent together, and yet we are required to continue our separate lives as usual. To say good night and part ways every evening. To keep different last names. To not notice each other's bodies too much. To pretend that we don't only ever want to be together.
My priorities have take a violent turn since meeting Robb, and since being engaged to him they have virtually ceased to exist beyond the message that throbs through my mind always: Be With Robb. Forget school, forget other friends, forget being a good daughter and sister. Just contrive to always be in Robb's presence. Sometimes I catch myself and wonder at this strange monolithic mentality, but mostly it is second nature now and as innate as the hunger pains that I feel when not allowed to eat every two hours.

I cannot wait to see this band live.

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as from far off,
as though far gardens withered in the skies;
they are falling with denying gestures.

And in the nights the heavy earth is falling
from all the stars down into loneliness.

We are all falling. This hand falls.
And look at others; it is in them all.

And yet there is One who holds this falling
endlessly gently in his hands.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

The changing of the seasons is affecting me adversely this year. Or perhaps I am affecting it adversely. I can't quite tell. All I know is that today when I walked out after dinner and the light was slate-grey, my heart sank. Then a fall wind came and blew through my hair, and as much as I love it for its crisp brightness, I could not help but feel a tinge of despair. The season of death is coming, and there is nothing to be done.
I love fall in theory- the bright leaves, the clean wind, the warm clothes- but in my heart I know that as the darkness pulls tighter and tighter around my days and the sun becomes a friend who comes only for lunch, I will have to fight melancholy off with liturgy and friends and my love as best I can.