But plans made are not always plans executed, and a 20x38 shirt was not to be found in the style of his liking, so I asked him for a second choice and he said, "Cologne." We headed to the men's fragrance department and the man behind the counter began lining up freshly-sprayed sheets of paper. We interspersed our sniffings of cologne with coffee beans, and watched as Patrick determined that his scent should be a simple, clean one.
It sounded so familiar; it was the same choice that Jeff made some time ago, when seeking a new scent of his own. They are very much different, my husband and this friend of mine, but they do share occasional flashes of similarity that make me laugh. It's as if there is a central repository of geekboy DNA that was drawn from to create the bases of their personalities.
We finished earlier than expected, and I indulged my growing fascination with perfumery by asking questions, resulting in my being pointed to scents I'd never heard of before. One in particular caught my attention, its lush (and almost edible) simplicity making me want to wallow in it.
Or, as Patrick noted, he and Jeff knew I was interested "because your invisible tail started to thump audibly."
I sprayed the fragrance on after my shower, reveling in the relative olfactory calm it produced. My preferences tend toward older, more complex perfumes; I hold great love for French classics like Cuir de Russie and Mitsouko.
The occasion? Watching improv comedy. We sat, Jeff and I, comped through the first performance but choosing to stay (and pay) for the second because we loved it, laughing out loud and relaxing against each other as the night went on. Comfort. Simplicity. No phones, no pressing deadlines, no code, just us a little dressed up and snickering until my laughs smudged my mascara against my lower eyelids.
While I am flirtatious with a few friends, Jeff and I are not the demonstrative sort. Our cues are easily missed if you don't know what to look for. From our cats, twinned halves of a whole, we've picked up the habit of nonverbal echolocation:
"Rowr?"
"Rowr."
—and there it is, the answer to the question: we know the other is there, and is listening. In the end, that's all we really want to know.
On the way back from the theatre we relived some of the better moments of the night, especially savoring the silly suggestions of mine that got incorporated into the show, and agreed that it had been an excellent day. When we climbed out of the car I marveled at the silvery sharpness of the moonlight, crisp and bright enough to cast midnight shadows, and as I concentrated for a moment I could smell the faintest cloud of scent still clinging to my skin.
"Wow. Look at that," I said. After locking up the car, Jeff looked up and nodded agreement.
I watched my feet lay silent black footprints on the Florida grass and thought to myself while walking in, yes indeed, Hanae Mori's "Magical Moon" was indeed the perfect perfume for the day—simple, calm, sweet, and clean—and I might just have to hunt up a tiny vial of it just so that in future days, I could jump back and at least smell the calm beauty of this day, even if I could not relive it.
]]>"The round number makes it easy and natural to take stock of your life."
I whispered agreement. Conversations like these don't often take place during the light of day; they are the omnipresent thoughts, but the last to be voiced. First in, but last out; only after the chitchat and the catching-up conversations are exhausted do the soul-searching words tumble out as the friend's hand reaches for the metaphysical doorknob of sleep.
I write this here knowing that he will see it, knowing that I'll dread the moment he comes home, wanders off to his computer, and eventually spots these words, because it'll likely happen while I'm here. None of these words will surprise him, but it's the first time I've acknowledged any of them openly.
]]>"The round number makes it easy and natural to take stock of your life."
I whispered agreement. Conversations like these don't often take place during the light of day; they are the omnipresent thoughts, but the last to be voiced. First in, but last out; only after the chitchat and the catching-up conversations are exhausted do the soul-searching words tumble out as the friend's hand reaches for the metaphysical doorknob of sleep.
I write this here knowing that he will see it, knowing that I'll dread the moment he comes home, wanders off to his computer, and eventually spots these words, because it'll likely happen while I'm here. None of these words will surprise him, but it's the first time I've acknowledged any of them openly.
Coming out here, and staying with Patrick and his family, is hard for a reason that is brutally selfish and utterly stupid and probably doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't been there (and probably to precious few of the people who have): Patrick's mother will come home. I can say that with a shrug and a smile, but it comes with an inner dish-up of sadness and leftover emotions that I just can't figure out how to process.
As I get closer to thirty, the one thing I come back to over and over is that I wish my father could have seen this life I'd created, and seen what kind of person I'd turned into. In the years before he died we had edged toward a relative peace, but it is the rarest of women who can come through as rocky of a relationship as my father and I had and square it all away into working order by her early twenties.
I wasn't that woman. To do so meant I needed more time than I was destined to get.
Much of my acquaintanceship with the coming 'thirty' revolves around where I've been in the past ten years, where I think I might be going, and who I wish to witness the process of transition between the two.
I ache for the fact that the person I'd put first on that list won't see any of this.
When asked about my life …
At ten, I would have said, "Did I do this right?"
At twenty, I would have said, "This is how it's going to be."
At thirty I find myself saying, "Is this right? I don't know, but I don't think you do either, so let's see where this takes us."
Over the past few years I've written with gradually less frequency about the impact of losing a parent, and for the most part, these days, I've come to terms with it. Nevertheless, every life change for me from now on will be evaluated in terms of not just what is there, but what is not there.
I wanted—want—him to see this recent positive upswing in my life, want it with a deep, aching sense of frustration and, yes, even anger, because part of me wants to face up with defiant teary anger and say "See? I've made something out of my life, and it couldn't have happened this way without everything that came before."
The sheer volume of what it took to put me in this chair, at this moment, staggers me. If I hadn't quit my evil job, I wouldn't have ended up doing web design at the ISP I worked at a few years ago. If I hadn't worked there, I wouldn't have met Kat or all of the people she introduced me to, and I wouldn't have worked dragon*con at all.
I wouldn't have met Patrick without dragon*con. Had I not done hospice care for my father a few years ago, I wouldn't have decided to fly out here to stay with him while his mother's transplant was taking place. If I hadn't flown, I wouldn't have tried to check out that book, and without wanting that book, I never would have found out that my library was trying to hire a coder/designer.
I wouldn't be here.
* * * * *
Seriously, Dad, this pisses me off. You should have gotten to see this, to see that despite your doubts my life turned out surprisingly well, but at some point I have to come to grips with the inevitable reality that without your death, my life would have turned out differently and there would be no 'this' for you to see.
Life's present to me on my thirtieth birthday: paradox. I can't show this uptick in my life off to the person that should most see it, because its existence requires his absence.
Son of a bitch.
So where does that leave me? I'm not sure. I suppose the simple and flippant answer is "Thirty, smartass." Older? Yes. Wiser? I don't think so. Perhaps just a bit more cognizant of life's capability of mingling bitter with sweet, a bit more appreciative of the subtle ironies inherent in life itself.
I suppose it means that at thirty, I am this: a woman contradictory enough to admit that she is jealous of her friend because despite a life-threatening illness, his parent will survive when mine didn't … but a woman loyal enough to realize that jealousy or no, when put up comes to shut up she'd do damned near anything in her power to make sure that years from now, he never has to write an entry like this one from his own point of view.
* * * * *
With that, I leave with a secret.
In life, it is not so important what touchstone we use to foster self-growth. The end result is more important than the process.
When I went to California, I started a ritual that I've kept. I see the ocean rarely, and for me it is always a major event; not just for the travel necessary to physically reach it, but for how I feel when I'm there. It's one of the few moments in which I realize how small I am on the scale of a planet; how these things, so important to me, become just another cup of water in a vast, ebbing ocean.
Every time I have gone to the ocean I've left a piece of myself there. I've taken a secret, an unresolved issue, and made a conscious decision to let it go, to imagine it burbling on the waves with the sea-foam and gradually sinking into the abyss with the receding tide. I left several in the surf of California. To my knowledge, they're still there by the Redondo Beach pier, serving as anchors for the barnacles and obstacles for the fish.
Tomorrow, packed between the beach chairs and the towels and the sunblock, I'll wedge this in, hoping that I'll be strong enough to heave it into the ocean and watch as it sinks --
-- and leave it there, a monolith for none but me.
If I've learned nothing else in the years of this life, it's that life's fragility dictates that we take every opportunity to choose joy, choose peace, and choose to better the lives of others. Such choices won't guarantee me a certain path in life, but they'll make it infinitely more likely that I'll like the weather wherever I do end up.
]]>Eight years married, ten years together; a third of my life now wrapped up in your presence. We've said this every year: it's not the ceremony that holds true importance, it's the everything that comes after that makes a marriage, and you, dear, I have loved more than anyone else I have known in my entire life.
I may fly away, but I am aware, oh so keenly aware, of where home is.
Here's to life. Yours, mine—and most importantly, ours.
Home soon.
]]>Eight years married, ten years together; a third of my life now wrapped up in your presence. We've said this every year: it's not the ceremony that holds true importance, it's the everything that comes after that makes a marriage, and you, dear, I have loved more than anyone else I have known in my entire life.
I may fly away, but I am aware, oh so keenly aware, of where home is.
Here's to life. Yours, mine—and most importantly, ours.
Home soon.
]]>Gareth gunned it, and we were gone. The water would have to wait for the next morning.
]]>Gareth gunned it, and we were gone. The water would have to wait for the next morning.
I'd felt silly for toting my straw hat through the Atlanta airport, but was glad of it as the sun shone down on me as we set up our beach gear. Chairs, towels, water, and sunscreen. Lots of sunscreen. The sand combined with the SPF 60 as I slicked down my arms and shoulders, staring the entire time, hypnotized, at the water. Once (theoretically) protected from the sun, I shed everything but the swimsuit and let my feet guide me to the water.
The wet sand sucked at my feet as I sand-scrobbled closer to the incoming tide, and then it foamed over me, brief and unceremonious. I kept walking, and the depth barely changed. A few feet from the water's edge, the sand became easier to walk on, and I stared down from the top of the water, not trusting what my feet were telling me until my eyes confirmed the suspicion. Under the swirl of salt water, the floor held endless, undulating ripples.
We picture events in our heads, and reality never quite matches our imagination. I didn't expect to be so fascinated by the play of light on water, to be able to see bits and pieces of shell half-buried in the sand. Was it a shell? I wasn't sure. I stopped, digging experimentally with a toe, hoping to clear off enough sand that I could grasp the piece I half-saw and bring it to my hands.
"You can't do that, you know."
"Do what?"
"Plant your toe in one place like that."
"Why?"
"Because the current will move you."
I thought of explaining, thought of using my hands to try to bridge the gap between my eyes and the ocean floor, and kept walking toward deeper water. I opened my mouth to say the words but when I did, I tasted the ocean on my tongue and thought no, it could wait.
]]>I've been disoriented.
It's improving.
I've been disoriented.
It's improving.
There are photos on the walls here, photos of people I do not know and whose lives I have only the barest of intersections with. Noah, your photo sits in the front room, the butterfly perennially half-perched on the branch, the photo safely ensconced in the frame I found in Huntsville. It fits in here, better than I think either of us expected.
I have a list of things to do that seemed somewhat important while I was in Huntsville. I make no secret of my list-making tendencies; there is comfort in having options, even if one chooses not to exercise them. So far, I have chosen not to exercise them. Any of them, really. There is retail therapy to do and a lighthouse to see and instead, I find myself errant, drawn again and again to the comforting, well-lit couch in the front room, and the peaceful doze of a book read between nods of head.
Patrick wandered about last night, lighting candles against the storm that raged while we watched Buffy episodes. "Do you have lots of power outages here?" I asked. He nodded.
It is hard to pinpoint the differences here. Foliage. Trees. I am still fascinated by palm trees, and was surprised to learn that one must use a saw to trim the bottom section of the tree to keep it neat. I had just assumed they grew that way. The air is thick, humid; it reminds me of summers in Arkansas save for the subtle scent of water. Most of the time, I do not see the water, but every time I open the door, I can smell it. It hangs in the air in a way that I cannot describe, that from now on I suspect I will always associate with Florida.
The folk at the local YMCA have proven to be far nicer than any of the YMCA-related people I spoke with on the phone prior to the trip. I expected to be able to work out once here without paying a membership fee; instead, I wandered in with Patrick on my first morning here and ended up with a free guest pass for the entire duration of my stay. (I also ended up marooning my notebook at the front desk, but that's another story of my forgetfulness for another, lazier, day.)
I think I might get to the retail therapy this afternoon, if the errant sunbeam doesn't catch me as it did yesterday. Should it happen, I would not argue, but should it not, I will count my lazy afternoon well-spent, nevertheless. The world doesn't need me for a little while, and I find myself unwilling to do more than just check in periodically.
I'm here, and that is enough.
]]>"And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?"
— Talking Heads
South and east, I think, past the sprawl and congestion of Atlanta to the sprawl and congestion of yet another place, but one that has something I haven't seen in quite some time. Ocean.
Into the blue again, indeed.
]]>"And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?"
— Talking Heads
South and east, I think, past the sprawl and congestion of Atlanta to the sprawl and congestion of yet another place, but one that has something I haven't seen in quite some time. Ocean.
Into the blue again, indeed.
I remember, vaguely, Jessica showing me how to walk on sand in Mobile, a lesson I had mostly forgotten by the time Noah re-taught me in a chilly SoCal December several years ago.
It's time to see if the lesson stuck, to grab the sarong and the straw hat and stow them among my mechanical pencil and book of devilish word puzzles and take them to the beach—take the SPF 8000 and a list of postcards to write and watch the water as it continues its ceaseless wash from the east.
I won't be online much for the next week.
Here's to ducking sunburns and solving crosswords at the beach and mojitos in a Brazilian steakhouse and late-night conversations that never quite have a point.
Here's to getting over the fear of flying.
Here's to a last lunch with Jake before he flies out west.
Here's to the spouse who lets me go, because he knows that the only way to keep someone like me truly rooted is to occasionally turn a blind eye when she takes wing.
I'll fly home in a little over a week. See you soon.
]]>