Swimming Underwater / The Memoir

   Instead of posting snippets and fairly self-contained narratives, what follows from this point on is more of the same but from the beginning on of a memoir entitled Swimming Underwater, about growing up in south Louisiana, being able to stand at my daughter's hospital window and look over the old neighborhood, aware of what went on down there and aware of what is being played out in the room behind me, my daughter, Jennifer, critically ill and in a coma from viral encephalitis.

   Keeping a journal during all those dark days gave me an outlet, a foundation, something to grab and weather the everyday changes that shaped everything in daily life. So it was a time of life folding back in on itself, the view from the window of the old neighborhood, the history there, where even Jennifer lived as a child, and the history of the hospital, where I was born, where family members had died. Life repeating familiar patterns and doing the best to make memory make some sense of it all--and both memory and events co-existing in the now, both alive and in a dance as one.