Magical Thinking

I've been having only a few magical thoughts the last few weeks. On Christmas morning, I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I didn't want anyone to open their presents because that would somehow stop my temporal slide away from Wendy and our life together.

On New Year's Eve, right at midnight when I was popping champagne at a friend's house, it occurred to me that it was now the first calendar year without her, and that she died "last year." That made me feel like something had punctured the universe, and I could see limitless black goo beyond.

And yesterday, when I was walking Cinder in the rain, at dusk, at Battle Point Park, and no one was around, and it grew so dark that I could only see the borders of the path ahead and the darkening sky above, I was crying my eyes out and moaning and trying not to scream. I cried out loud, "Show me a sign!" At that moment a flock of ducks on my left, which I hadn't seen in the dark, jumped up together and flew 10 or 20 feet over my head and landed in the pond on my right. It seems to me that there were about 80 of them, which means there were probably only 30. As I listened to their quacks and beeps, I thought about Wendy's love of rubber duckies, and I thought of the wood rubber duckie that I carved for her as an anniversary present in October. And by then, I was no longer crying.