I missed last week’s post. If this were a professional production, I’d have backlogs upon backlog of entrees so I could take off for a whole month if I wanted, but, no, this is a passion project and I scratch out a rant often the day it is due.

Last week, I was just too sad. Sadness makes me want to write around things rather than right through, and I hadn’t wound around and around the thing enough to make words of it. How could I write something appropriately playful for the Survival Guide? Not when my cousin is in the hospital. Not when my brother, who will always be my legend, has been calling and the homesickness in his voice makes him sound so small. Why should I write here when my hope is fluttering in the rubber balloon that traps it, when my mind is measuring too-small coffins?

What was missing was hope.

Since last week, I do have reasons to hope. I did learn that my cousin will get to go home. I did spend 3 days in the perfect outdoors of Yosemite. I did drink a lot of wine (there, there it is, I can laugh at myself again). Truthfully, I don’t think I could do anything resembling revelry without the hope.

And that is what partying is, that hope. That promise that everything’s going to be all right, tonight. Just like hope can be overbearing, can make us willfully ignore the smallness in voices that pleads, “I might not be alright. I might not be alright, and I might want you to hear me,” dancing can erase, drinking and talking and putting on our party clothes can overflow our worries with a blank white light. Maybe it’s okay to need that. Maybe it’s human to want to forget, to ignore.

Meet me there, have a drink with me. We can worry tomorrow.