Mari has this way
     of walking into my head
     without opening the door.

I’ll be mid-task,
    mid-sentence,
         mid-sip—

    and then she's there,
    not loud,
    just present,
    and suddenly my focus

    is a paper airplane in a crosswind.

I lose whole minutes like that.

Staring at nothing,
        thinking everything,
        wondering how a person
        can become a constant

        without ever touching the room.

But then I sit down to write
        and something clicks.

A different kind of focus—
  the clean kind,
  the kind that lines up the words
  like pool balls
  and lets me break them open

  with one honest breath.

It’s strange:
     I can’t concentrate on emails
                because she exists,
      but I can concentrate on her
                  like it’s my job.

Lately my focus has names.

Health:
       mine, on purpose.
       labs and follow-ups,
       no more surgeries,
       immunotherapy like a calendar block

       I intend to keep.

I’m focusing on getting strong enough
    to travel without bargaining with my body.

Ava:
    PT,
    that knee,
    her quiet grit

    that makes me stand up straighter.

I focus on her recovery
  the way Mari focuses on Coal—
                        steady,
                      no drama,
                     attentive,
   just the daily work of care

   until independence returns like a habit.

Steelers: the ritual focus.

Ava and me,
    eyes on the screen,
    pretending the rest of life

    can wait until after the next play.

It’s not escape exactly—
         it’s alignment.

A small shared tunnel
  where the noise can’t reach us.

Coal:
     Her gravity.

Mari's focus on him is a language
       I’ve come to respect—
       the way she notices what hurts,
                           what helps,
         what he needs before he asks.

Love, translated into logistics.
Warmth, measured in routines.

And then there’s the focus
    we don’t name out loud—

    the one that keeps us threaded.

The one that makes a “good morning”
    feel like a hand on the shoulder.

The one that makes a song
    feel like runway lights.

So yes—

I lose focus when Mari invades my thoughts.

But I also find it there.

In the places that matter:
   in healing,
      helping,
      showing up,
      writing the truth down

      until it holds still.

Focused isn’t just attention.

It’s devotion with a schedule.
It’s care that repeats.
It’s love learning to be useful.

And somehow,
    through all these different versions of it,
    the point stays the same:

    I’m trying to aim my life
        at what I can keep,
           what I can fix,
           what I can carry—

    and at the quiet pilot light
    that keeps Mari in my sky

    even as I’m looking at everything else.