Hmmm. I am facing a managerial decision. I have started giving my blog out to people--lots of people--six people this week. Previously, only my closest girlfriends and strangers read my blog. It makes me sort of shy--these tangles of my private innerworkings are becoming public to more of my personal friends and family members. What if I want to give my blog to a guy I like? Will it scare him away? Am I willing to sacrifice writing about him and how beautiful he is until I am his official girlfriend? Am I so vulnerable that I need to? Attempting to keep things mysterious on my blog is lame.

Last night my teenage cousin Matt came over and I helped him write an application essay for dual-enrollment at the local community college. He was asked to describe his career goals and interests and experiences. It was the first time in a long time that I have helped someone with English--and it was difficult for me not to write it all out for him. I had so much to say about how awesome he is.

I made him do it. It was so much fun--there I was actually teaching again. Helping someone to express themselves. To determine what it is that they want to say, helping someone to be heard. We brainstormed ideas about him and what he's done in his life and what he enjoys and why and what he imagines himself doing someday and his personal philosophy and then we put it all together. And he wrote it himself . I am so proud of him. I am proud of myself too. I can't wait to be a teacher.

This morning my aunt read it and said that it was so good and it almost made her cry and she thanked me for being present in her family's life. (Aunt Lynn, I'm sorry for ever calling your kids brats. I didn't mean it and I am sure I have deserved the label many times myself). I am so glad I know them all. I even gave Matt my blogsite so he can read my writing if he wants to.

Which reminds me of Sonoita: the evil half-sister of a city that I never knew I had--the place in Arizona to which my parents were all packed up and ready to move before the deal fell through when I was an infant--the desert place full of cacti and mobile homes that would have taken me away from all of my wonderful family in Florida that has shaped so much of who I am-- the place that is intriguing and mysterious yet dangerous and mean.

I had a very stong internal reaction when we were in the Ford Escape passing the road leading to Sonoita and my Dad casually mentioned how close they were to raising me there. How they had rented the U-haul and were all packed up when the deal fell through. He didn't see the lump growing in my stomach or how my hands became nervously sweaty as I looked out over the acres and acres of barren red dirt and prickly-pine and then up to the redeeming gorgeous purple mountains. He didn't see the lump that I choked back in my throat as I thought of what it might feel like not knowing Mariah and Kyle and Hannah and Quinn and Matt and Sam and Lynn and Neal and Grandmamma Simmons and Grandma Pat and Grandpa Alto and Grandaddy and Tommy and Lois-- but especially Mariah and Kyle. They are like my siblings.

Would I have visited them every year? Would I be the same person I am today? Would Mariah and I have instantly liked each other at the family reunions and promised to write to each other all the time and would we have traded our most valuable toys? Would we have still been inseparable? Would we have cried to our parents and insisted that we must be allowed to visit each other at least four times a year? Would I have known about all her boyfriends and poetry and would we have been there for each other through all of the miscellaneous frightening adventures of growing up and becoming women? Would Kyle have teased me about wearing polka-dots? Would he have threatened to beat up my boyfriends that he didn't like? Would he have taught me how to ride my bike and make friends and give me good advice? Would he have been there to take refuge in and laugh hillariously with when Mariah and I were fighting?

Would I have felt utterly alone in the desert in the middle of nowhere? Would I have partied in Tucson? Would I have truly been the older sister without Mariah there? Would that have forced me to be stronger and bigger and tougher? Would I have sought refuge in horses like my mom once did and be a champion barrel-racer? Would I dress in western clothes and have big silver belt-buckles? Would I have gotten out of there the first chance I got? Would I have known that only a scholarship could save me and would I have gone to Georgetown or Oxford or Berkely? Would UF be a new and exciting place to be? Would I still be single, not a mom, free to roam and adventure and pack up my bags to any part of the world?