Home again, home again, Jiggety-Jog

Divorce, separation, even when wanted, is funny that way, I suppose. Unhoused, home-less, de-homed? To have yet be without.

It's the little things. Well, first it is the big things.  All of routine, the town you return to at the end of the day, animals to care for and the suddenly not. Whether or not you own a stand-mixer, how to find the bathroom light switch in the dark.  But you buy night-lights, the LED kind to save on your new electric bill or to keep the suddenly-rent from going up.  You plug the GPS in again to go grocery-shopping, or just to get home from work on Wednesday, and take long walks to clear your head, and to find out where all these new roads go.

I have a picture in a rattly wood frame, Kelly-Green paint flaked along the hair-line cracks, a picture made in the 60's and probably found garage-saling with my mom before I was in nursery school.  A little girl kneels before her quilted bed, tiny paper hands clasped in nighttime prayer.  She has settled me in for sleep for longer than I can even remember and is the first decoration I hang whenever I move. I would rather not sleep until she is over my pillow.  

It's the little things. Beginning to recognize local faces, knowing where to get a friendly cup of coffee and an iced cutout cookie on my walk,finding the bathroom light switch in a blackout without a compass or torch, reaching into the right cabinet on the first try, returning from a particularly long day at work, all by my own navigation, and sighing into relaxation at arriving home.

Into the away

I often feel shameful and wish-washy for spending so much of my time sitting on the proverbial fence eagerly searching for the intense predilection telling me into which side I should step; but then I have always felt like a walking dichotomy so it really isn't any wonder that most of the time I am straddling indecision with one leg evenly in both sides of possible outcome.

My wanderlust is nearly feral yet I wallow contentedly in the me-shaped divot I've hollowed out and polished perfectly in my home. I thrill at the sight of full-sized U-Hauls barreling someone else off on a new adventure and keen toward pick-up trucks passing me by on the highway laden heavily with kitchen chairs precariously tied to peeling dressers, always the odd towel or ratted shirt tucked between wood surfaces, incongruously hanging on by one corner in the backlash of traveling at 70mph into the unknown.

Committed relationships are hard for me; or rather the staying is hard. Growing up and well into adulthood I craved a sense of roots and consistency but was overcome by a steadily increasing itch to move every two years, and a craving to overhaul my life every three. Almost like clockwork I cut off most of my hair at the three year mark, and picked and packed up on year four from 18 years of age to 32. Same felt good but the prospect of one same for the rest of my life felt like being backed against a wall with the sky closing down.

My culinary satiation point is null and perhaps inability to find satisfaction runs universal. All of the world is never quite enough. I can eat half my weight in foods tantalized by texture and taste, or, when I had a sex life, indulge for hours every day and still crave more. If we snuggle and it is good I want to curl up inside of you.

A former boyfriend, a best friend I left when the call of the road was increasingly overwhelming despite the leaving deeply breaking my own heart, once labeled me a sensory junkie. It is true. All of the world around comes through in vibrations of scent and emotion. My memory runs through my heart. The past is always but a night-dream or a labile barrier away. I can not say if we are all like that a little bit or only some of us, or some of us a little bit and others, like me, all the way. The memories I keep of lives past come strong and full of pleasures, love, and pain as freshly as if they happen now. Separating what exists now and what was then is a conscious effort or not at all.

I have learned to hinder most of my impulsive behaviors, to recognize it at the lead and step back long enough to realistically consider my next move. I am still learning to have more control by just letting go... still learning but slowly gaining ground.

Opening Doors

It repeatedly astounds me how thoroughly one's life can change in a relatively short amount of time. I have dog-eared, wrinkly-covered, user-softened copies of most of Robert Fulghum's publications lying around. His writing has always touched my sentimental, introspective, people-watching core. In one of his book's he speaks of the heart-stopping changes that can occur in a moment, preempted by a lone sentence such as, "You're fired." "You're hired!" "I'm pregnant." "It's over." Those changes, welcome or not, propel you to turn the corner and take action. They can be extremely joyful, or just as devastating. They can be exciting or terrifying and all can impose a sense of helplessness, of being out of control. These are the changes we fear or anticipate on long drives alone or when our heads finally hit the pillow. These are some of the things I take time to worry about when my gut starts to tingle with idiopathic foreboding.

There is another kind of change, of course; the change we willingly instigate usually precipitated by a cavalcade of needs or occurrences. I changed my life intentionally when I went away to college and when I quit; when I moved back to PA and when I moved to ME; when I went to nursing school and left Massage Therapy school; when I accepted and then called off an engagement; when I accepted another and got married. One of my favorite quotes is by Anais Nin:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."~Anais Nin


I am on the precipice of enacting changes right now because what I've been doing for so long just isn't working anymore, but I'm frightened, too, to step out of the comfort zone I've grown so accustomed to even though I know the change is needed now, and the doors are open. I don't know if or when they might open again.

my little fuzzy one

This evening I hauled the 1/3 full forty pound bag of blended bird seeds out back all the way practically to the golf course to fill the furthest feeder for the birdies that congregate in the patch between the woods and the shed under which the groundhog lives; the same groundhog I oohed and awwed over Saturday afternoon when I looked out my bedroom window and saw him back there standing up in groundhog fashion :)
(after I got out of bed at 1:15PM on Saturday following 14 hours of sleep- this work/school thing is getting to me!!)

Next I pulled the bag of seed in to the tree in the center of the yard and left it at peace as I filled the two suet feeders that are frequented by downy headed woodpeckers and flickers when the black birds are not hogging it.

I wondered where my beautiful, loving 'stray' black kitty was but we had visited earlier for her lovin's and her belly was full of chicken and kibble. I hoped she was in her shed, warm and resting.

Next, inward to the feeders 15 feet from my bedroom windows. I reached in and grabbed the quart-sized wonton soup take-out container scoop and saw something oval and gray flit away from my hand.

A mouse? Could it be?

I looked into the bag. A mouse indeed! An adorable little fellow (or girl :) with big, round ears and gray-brown short shiny coat and those big as buttons round, black eyes. He did not seem very scared at all; but then neither was I. I tried to scoop him up in hopes of putting him somewhere deeply grassy, or carrying him back towards the house (yes, to let him back in to the porch) when he climbed onto my arm

I was delighted! I worried about this wild mouse being skittish and biting me, but he did not seem at all like he would. (I even tried to pet him. Shhh!!!)

He crawled up one arm and down my back before crawling to my other shoulder as I walked to the nearest shed. He sat on my shoulder and I looked him over, certain he was the same one I saved from my cat in my apartment two months ago.

I lowered my arm toward the ground and he hesitated before leaping off. He sat on the dirt at the edge of the shed and we watched each other for several seconds before he ran on under. I got a full scoop of food and left it at that edge.

I told him as he ran off to stay away from my outside kitty friend.

I am hoping he finds his way back in.

to the last finally

In the second summer I lived in a house by the sea in Long Branch, in the first and last summer Jason lived with me, in the season Maine first captivated me, I often listened to Sting's "I Was Brought to my Senses" while gardening covered blissfully to the top of scalp in dirt wet, caked, and dry.

I daydreamed through my plants to the garden it would become. I pet them and coddled them as they grew then marveled when they outgrew dependence upon me and took on strengths of their own, when my job was keeping up only with the weeding and watering.

I listened to Mercury Falling, but mostly this song, and dreamed through my gardening and ocean walks of getting back to Maine.

My four years in Maine became a separate life and it's no exaggeration that a Yankee magazine can bring me to wistful tears.

Now when I garden I hear this song, and when I hear this song the sweet Maine air falls on my face all over again and I dream.

Twice as much

My boyfriend and I have been spending the night together since our second date. First of all we love to snuggle and cuddle, and secondly we lived an hour away from each other for the first year. It was also easier.

I like going to bed by his good night kiss and waking up to the sound of his breathing. Curling up with him first thing is the best way ever to start a day. On the weekends, we'll wake up to one another, spend all day together, and go to bed next to each other again.

Then sometimes, like tonight, we choose to have a traditional date. Most of the time he will pick me up. Occasionally we will meet. He buys me dinner. We may partake in a movie or a walk (or a side trip to Best Buy ;) and then we say good night.

It's nice to get dressed up extra special and take time with our appearances and outfits to surprise each other.

And, as Boyfriend once said, "It's nice to go home feeling good like that."

In my own words I understood what he was conveying, and I was glad to know he also still walks away from our dates feeling a little euphoric, anticipating our next time together just a little bit more.

It was great fun falling in love at 15, but it's even better at 33; and better than that falling in love just a little bit more with the handsome man who is already mine.

Life just keeps gettin'

Life just keeps gettin' weirder. Er, cooler? Ah, more surprising?

In our Wednesday night class we have lots of extra time 'cause in our first session our super instructor kinda' sorta' packed two quarters worth of Ethics into one.
So now on Wednesdays we talk about Business with the big B just like we are scheduled to, and cover any relevant stuff on Professionalism and Ethics-
and then we shut the door and talk about cool stuff like Reiki, and the chemistry of the human body and the not yet fully comprehended human energy and mind.

We talk about spiritual stuff and a single atom appearing in two places at one time in the particle accelerator, and how just maybe we all have a hand (or a head) in creating our own 'coincidences' after all.

We all have our own stories. I still like to tell about the day I knew in my kitchen 600 miles away that my cousin got engaged, and how looking back I realized that every time she contacted me from the time she and her husband- who were trying to not start a family yet- must have conceived until the day she learned she was pregnant, I had this feeling in my gut every single time that she was with child.

How often do you suddenly think of a song you haven't heard in seventeen gazillion years- some off the wall song nobody has heard since 1986- and the next day you turn on the radio and walk dead into that very song on the first note?

Last week I asked in the morning for my old friend Scott. It wasn't exact, but I went to an interview that day and lo and behold happened on a Scott. Last week I wondered hard about an old friend, and two days later he shocked me with a call.
Last night I asked my boyfriend, 'Hey, have you ever heard from J*** again since... ?'
"No." And neither of us expected a different outcome- until he called three minutes later.

Maybe we are more connected than we think we are, or just as connected after all.