I haven't deserted you, dearest OS-ers.  The title is a reference to Ezekiel Chapter 37, in which God brings a valley full of dry bones to life and tells Ezekiel that this represents ultimate restoration for the House of Israel, which has lost its hope (this is my paraphrase, and I am very clearly not a professional theologian).

No, I'm not a theologian, but what I am right now is a valley full of dry bones. 

It's the end of the semester, and a very dear friend has always told me that it's natural to feel wrung out around this time, so perhaps that's part of it.

But there's also the silenced voice of my baseball team, which is why I can't go on with the parallel histories of the family and the Phils for the time being.  I tried to start composing a post in my head on the drive to work yesterday, and I couldn't get past the first few sentences.  After Richie Ashburn (1950 Phillies star, Harry Kalas's long-time broadcasting partner) passed on in 1997, I couldn't watch baseball for a year.  Just now, I can watch baseball (or what passes for baseball as committed by the particular pair of teams in whose media market I now reside ;-) ), but apparently I can't write about it.  My pieces of Veterans Stadium--which debuted with Harry in 1971--are beside me as I write, so maybe that's something.

There are issues with The One.  The issues are my fault, both the recent events and the underlying tensions behind them.  That doesn't mean I'm having fun here.

I miss my mom.  She's still alive, but no longer herself, and so I cry myself to sleep at night like a kid at camp because I miss my mom.

I'm about to turn a milestone-type age, and I'm a childless woman who's pretty much lost her mother, and every month means that one more chance to have a child goes--quite literally, forgive the graphic nature--down the drain.

So it's a time of dryness.  Of detachment.  Of feeling ever-so-tired and like I'm watching the world from behind a wall of glass.  Of praying to be divinely gifted with the faith to find hope.