Another book shuts. Another demanding, unnerving, wonderful story to add to my list, to twirl around in my thoughts. A true story. A re-telling. A reclamation. A way to make the moment truly hers.

On the way to the airport Friday, to visit my mom by the sea, I saw it. A blue Z. The car. Tears welled up. From where? How many times has my true story been told and re-told? How many cars, like this one, have I passed while driving in cars and walking down avenues? Why does the feeling come now? Ribs jammed into the handle of the car door, everything closing in around me, my mantra: "I have to be home," drifting through the air, hot with his breath and my confusion, trying to slip out from under him and in doing so, slip out of the moment, out of time, make it stop, make it the way it was, the way it was before.

My lover puts her hand on my shoulder, knowing where I've gone. We've said little about it, we two. It is there, to be sure, but it was a long time ago, and for the most part, not on the surface of me.

It is my job to gather stories, brave, terrifying stories of women's lives, their stuggles to survive. I have learned where to place them and how to shield myself from the pain inherent in them. This is a necessary mechanism of coping. A strategy I employ from love, from a desire to be able to hear the next woman's story and not crumble.

And maybe this story, told in the gifted words of a writer for whom I didn't need to be strong, hit home. And still, the desire is there: to hold her, to tell her how amazingly she fought back, how powerful and brave and strong she is in the telling, how much stories like hers, no *ours*, need to be told.

Someone asked me last week, at the end of a self-defense talk, if I'm always "this tough," if I ever let my guard down. And the answer is a resounding, "Yes"--I have safe places to land and warm sanctuaries I can rely upon to keep me full and happy and believing and hopeful. And the answer is no, my guard will never be down again.

October 22, 2002