there now stands a youthful citadel in my backyard, and there was much rejoicing. today as i sit here thinking back over the weekend it strikes me as a qualified statement of hope. (for those of you i didn't recruit to help build it, a little background may be useful. conrad received one of the wooden playsets that have become fairly common. it has 3 swings monkey bars, a climbing wall, and a bumpy slide, not to mention the wooden roof, a hundred thousand lag bolts and millions of wood screws. and now it stands shading the setting sun. ) hope. hope for the future is a complicated emotion for me now after losing connor. for 5 years now, the future is something that i have avoided, well, almost pathologically. why? when i imagine the future with my family it's always tagged by the words "if they don't die". those of you that haven't walked down this particular path may find that an odd feeling to have resonating like a tone in the background of your life. but it will sound familiar to some of you. like i said, it's sort of complicated. now, i have this structure in the back half of my yard. wooden, tall, splintery, still unsanded and un-waterproofed, brand new. with no real memories, but future ones. friday play days with his play group, bare feet and summer heat, perhaps broken arms, or legs, the inevitable structural modification, dirt clod and orange wars - a future filled with the stuff of life. hopefully. bleh. complicated. and here i am, standing in my head looking at it and thinking it's not built with wood and metal, but emotions. and not just this plaything but everything. all things colored through "me-colored glasses". painted with hope, love...and fear. painted by my past. is there another way to see it? not that I've found. inside the house there is another wooden thing that i built with my hands. smooth and cool, painted from a palette of rage, confusion, sadness and love. but i'm not ready to talk about that one yet. maybe tomorrow. maybe never. e.