The first 21 years of my life were spent in the hamlet of Fort Hunter, New York. It was a small, quiet town with a long story. Its story goes back to the 17th century, when, after a land swap with Mohawk clans, a fort was built as was a chapel named after Queen Anne of England. In 1820, the fort and chapel were removed to make way for the Erie Canal, which brought traffic and trade to Fort Hunter.

Near my former workplace is a pond that I would always walk around during my lunch break. The pond is small, roughly a half mile in diameter and shaped like a stretched-out kidney. It plays host to dozens of pond sliders (turtles), minnow-like fish, and large birds such as blue herons and white egrets. The pond sits across an intersection, diagonal to my office building. When I would go for my routine long walks, I’d always start off at the pond, taking the asphalt nature trail (there’s something oxymoronic about an asphalt nature trail, isn’t there?) …

In February 2001, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. I was 43 and scared shitless of cancer. My husband was scared too, but kept it to himself for the most part. I was freaking out. Somebody had to stay calm and it was him. That March, I underwent a total abdominal hysterectomy as treatment. Fortunately, my recovery was swift and uneventful.

It was, however, just our first test of the “in sickness” part of our marriage vows. I believe we passed with flying colors. …

I don’t remember exactly when I wrote “The Astronomer’s Wife,” but it was after a particular evening about ten years ago. I was curled up on our couch, trying to decide what we might watch on cable that night when my husband walked into the living room. He beamed a big toothy smile at me, and my heart sank. The smile wasn’t meant for me. He was excited because it was a perfect, clear night for stargazing, a rare occurrence in this part of Florida. He was going out to chart the stars.

He was so happy and, with a…

You believed that I would always come back to you, if you wanted me to. After all, I had blindly followed you while we were both at community college in 1975. At your request, I sewed a white caftan for you, and you appeared like a Messiah with your long kinky brown hair and sparse beard. I studied meditation with you and accepted your theory that I was “messed up” because of my mother. Over pizza, you told your friends that I was a “cold fish.” One of them came to my defense with “No, she’s a hot tuna.”

I…

I don’t have a garden, unless you consider 15 potted plants to be a garden, which I suppose they could be but maybe that can be a story for another day.

I define the word garden rather loosely. A couple of blocks from my house sits a stormwater facility. (I keep calling it a pond and my engineer husband keeps correcting me … which is funny because the city thinks it’s a lake hence the name Lake Le Marc (major eye-roll here)). I digress (which I often do …), but in a further discussion as what to call this body…

My day started off rainy, gray and cold, a bit unusual for this time of year in Florida. My clothes — black and gray — suited the day and my mood, but it was Thursday and so I ignored my mood and Zoomed into a yoga class at noon. The instructors for this yoga studio don’t often offer mantras to focus on during our breathing exercise but today’s instructor did.

Take a breath in, think to yourself “Just,” release your breath and think to yourself, “Let Go.” Inhale — Just. Exhale — Let Go. Inhale — Just. …

They laid their hands side by side
She marveled
How much alike they were
She, full of life
The other, near death

The other near death
Burned bright
With beach-bleached hair
Sandy skin
A smile an ocean-wide

The other near death
Burned bright
And hummed through
Dot-matrix printers and laser jets

A low constant hum of life in words
Paper cascading from their mouths
Laid end to end they would circle the earth
Wrapping it tight like a silk girdle

The other near death
Burned bright
Writing more in her one-half-century
Than most could have written in two

The one…