The baby and I are poking around in the closet when we find some of my old business cards from UTSA in an old bag. On the backsides, I draw some pictures of things she knows. Then I remember a scene from the film version of Paul Bowles book, The Sheltering Sky.
After the female protagonist has nursed her husband through a long and drawn out episode of typhoid in the middle of nowhere in the desert, ending in his death, she lets herself drift into a situation where she is a willing detained guest of a fellow with many wives. She has a tiny suitcase of her possessions, including a travel journal that she disassembles, hanging the pages on the rafters to decorate the room of her beatific imprisonment.
The journal is a symbol of a former life, which has given way to chance encounter without a clear path or focused direction any more. I knew that having a baby was going to change my life beyond recognition. And I am grateful for it.
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