Sometime After the Equinox

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We drove from Portland to Seattle, walked through two colleges, one urban, one treed and full of enthusiastic undergrads. We ate at a vegan restaurant, we slept in a fancy Marriott hotel, we talked about music and art and then, when we got home, we bought wax pastels and mixed media weight paper, and talked about what to do when friends self-harm or we are afraid friends might self-harm. 

We made three laps through Pike Place market, watched the sun set on Puget Sound. We saw Mt. Rainier shift through the clouds. We ordered burritos in the hotel, coffees in the morning. It has been sunny and cold. 

We walked around the University of Puget Sound on Friday and I stopped being able to feel my legs. He slept on the ride home from Tacoma, and all I could think of was all the times I drove with him asleep in the car, in his carseat, or in the back seat, or with the seat flat in the front. Home to Michigan from Minnesota or Wisconsin, or Illinois while my folks still lived there or my aunt was still alive and we still did Christmases there; home from Cannon Beach; home from Little League and therapy. How, when he was in his carseat, I'd grab his foot to reassure him I was still there. I remember you grabbing my knee, he said. And now he is 17 and remarkable and smart and talented and funny and troubled, as any 17 year old with a conscience is. He is remarkable. I cannot tell you how proud and in awe of him I am, but I am. He is a beautiful and complicated human. And I get to live with two of these humans--D and J, both of whom are spectacular humans and every Friday the four of us have Family Game Night and play some stupid game and I can barely keep myself from weeping. If you had told me, at 30, that this would be my life, that I could have brought us here, to this family, these people, I would not have believed you. And I am 45, which feels both too young for this and also ancient, all the folks I sing with in my choir are median age 27. Anyway. 

We came home and it was sunny and cold and we walked the dog and made dinner and I woke early Saturday and went for a run and got my Covid booster and made banana bread and Sunday I woke after a restless night, everything aching and a fever, and cleaned the chicken coop and top-dressed the annual vegetable garden with chicken manure and woodchips and we walked the olden dog through the thinning light and I ran a little.

And I got good writing news which my first instinct was not to believe because good news, and people being nice to me, seems impossible to believe; and the chickens are molting and the air smells of woodsmoke and cedar and earth and R. changed the sheets and the kitchen remodel is done and the cats are all stressed out and peeing in inappropriate places and the dog vomited Exorcist-style twice now but the vet says he's incredibly healthy for a 15 year old.

Anyway. Or, anyhoosies as my former administrative coordinator would have said. Here we are. 



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