I rarely show my face here, a few author or event photos, myself in New Mexico a summer ago, in a dress patterned with lemons I’d bought for my oldest daughter, the photo she took of me in a hospital elevator, two days before surgeons took a scalpel to my belly and cut.

Here, on the advent of yet another stick season, I paused and snapped photos of my reflection in the dirty windows of a nearly abandoned town grange. Two in one post? How’s that for nonsensical? November, a season I’ve often met with dread. This year, a welcome respite, the lengthening nights that encourage waking in the darkness, as in a secret. Finally, after a struggling summer, I’m writing hard about grief and illness, death’s foggy abyss, fear. My youngest had just headed to college, the sting of her absence barely scabbing over, when I was overcome with cancer, and my daughters flocked back. Now, we are all well, all healthy, so I am learning again to live without what Tillie Olsen called moving according to the rhythms of others. The deep pleasure of connecting with old friends, the sweetness of new people that chance and writing and disease have brought my way.

November is the twilight’s gloaming beauty, the sharpening of cold, warmth of woodstove, the pleasure of light. I’ve lucked upon reading the Lieke Marsman, who writes:

Are there writers who can succeed without melancholy?

Good writers, I mean.

Writers without fury?

Good writers, I mean.