Be here right now. (My husband talks me down from the cliff.)

"But I keep letting people down," I was saying, to my husband, who was listening. "I do my best to be where I should be, to give back to those who have given to me, to do my job, my ever-expanding job, but even so, I'm late, I'm behind, I'm absent, my friends are wondering if I'm in fact a friend."

"I haven't had my father for dinner."

"I missed a reading tonight."

"I had to say no to four kind offers."

"I'm behind and I'm behind."

I am forever walking around, I said, (imploringly), feeling some kind of version of incomplete. Feeling every kind of version of lousy. I am walking around with all kinds of failure walking after me.

My husband looked at me. He listened. There was that flick of impatience in his eyes.

"Here's what you are forgetting," he said. "You are here. Right now.

"Be here. Right now."