Grace.

I now keep a private journal of the classic variety. It’s a bunch of blank, unlined pages, bound with a black cover. I write everything in it—stuff I don’t even want to admit to myself.

Last weekend, I flew to attend two weddings in California, and when I returned, I couldn’t find my journal. I thought at first that I left it at the hotel I stayed at in San Diego. I started thinking of what the hotel staff must have thought of me when they, no doubt, read through each page on their breaks. Sandwich crumbs and soda can rings, my jealous thoughts and needy wining. I thought of my journal in the lost and found bin among keys, wet swimming suits, lonely socks. I was embarrassed. I felt like the real me was out there, being passed from hand to hand, being laughed at in groups, but privately, these people would go home and really understand me because they would feel the same way about most things as I do.

I ransacked my parents’ house to find it (I live there again). And when I did find it, it was hidden in my suitcase, where I left it, between two zippered pieces of luggage.

Lots of things have happened since I last posted, and I’ll try to start writing on here again because I miss it. But I have to find a balance between what I write in my private journal and what’s honest enough to be written on here.

A quick update on my life is that my best friend is getting married next year. I’m her maid of honor, and I’m thrilled that she’s marrying such a sweet, loveable and caring guy. They’re perfect together. Over the years they’ve started to look more like each other, which is actually the sign of a perfect match. Soon, I will buy them matching windbreakers and wheely bags. Then, the transformation will be complete. My best friend hates this image, but I think it’s the epitome of unity.

(Aside: I feel like I abuse commas. Comments, anyone?)

***

On my walk from the metro to work, there is a stench that is so gruesome, I wonder if perhaps someone died in one of the garages and then a maintenance worker boarded up their body in the garage. It’s like this decomposing body is a mass of greenish velvet of rot, or the remnants of a kaleidoscope of maggot-infested salad beans. I am not the only one who feels this way. Now, a group of us is rethinking our morning route, and we’re considering walking a block out of our way to avoid the stench. I am concerned that perhaps something organic did actually die under Union Station, and it really is melting in the August heat. My God, that smell could kill an innocent bystander.

***

My brother is also getting married. My family, myself included, couldn’t be happier. He’s with a great girl from Prague, and they’ll most likely have tiny children with very heavy heads and soft ears. As slightly older kids, they will be beautiful and will have genius-style brain sponges, and I will love to have them over for varying degrees of spoiling sessions. I’ll feed them banana bread and we’ll do sissy art projects involving elbow macaroni and glitter. Then, they’ll look up at me with saint-like eyes, barely able to contain their huge, brown, marble eyeballs in their huge heads, and they’ll say, “Aunt Marina, really?” The same way that I say, “Really?” when a Northwest Airlines representative tells me there’s nothing he can do for me; the flight is cancelled until three days from now and no, they can’t put me up in a hotel or give me free vouchers, that I have to call the customer service helpline 24 hours from the cancellation of my flight to redeem my 1,000 miles of allotted freakin’ flyer compensation. (freakin’ flyer=frequent flyer, same thing)

Then, these kids will open my fridge in search of a carton of milk, the kind that opens up at the top and is a single serving, and instead, they’ll pull out a tiny universe, between the size of a grain of sand and a Cheerio, and they’ll say something prophetic in unison. Something like, “Don’t worry, Aunt Marina, the dream you had last night is contained in this grain of sand.” And I’ll pry the little boy’s sticky fingers apart to, indeed, reveal a sparkling, gemlike universe, covered in doughy banana crumbs. And then, I’ll eat it.

When their parents come by to pick them up, the kids will say they had a good time, and that they’d like to come back soon.

***

I’m still very much in love. I know because when I think about lying in bed with this person, or walking to a park in San Francisco on a Saturday afternoon, I don’t want to be anywhere else. I’m a little concerned that we don’t fight. I thought that fighting was normal, and I wonder if one day, we’ll have a fight, and not be ready for it. But the fight will probably be in whispers, while I’m cradling his head in my lap or squishing his face between my hands, so that we forget about the fight for the moment and make love instead.