Home Again, Home Again?

Where is home again?

I write tonight from my rental house on the little island by the bridge.  The one where I grew up.  The name of the island even has Little in it, and yet despite its small size, it has distinct neighborhoods.  And my rental is not in the neighborhood I grew up in.  It is at least three miles and 15 years away -  it feels as distant, as alien as the moon. 

After rehearsal I hit the road for a walk for two very good reasons: it was beautiful out, and I was terrified.  I went to a familiar place, a public, quarried, graffitied, lookout, makeout place.  A safe place.  A palimpsest place.  I walked in the mossy lane, longer than I remember; I climbed up the rocky slope, shorter than I remember.  But at the top, the encircling view was- for all intents and purposes- the same.  The play of light familiar on the green of the bridge, the blue of the water, the reflective gray of the mudflats- the mudflats that had earlier caressed my nose as I crossed the causeway whispering "you would know us anywhere til your dying day and beyond and we are your childhood, and we will always be right here fragrant and exposed of a low tide, longer than you will live"- the spruce, the roofs, the sunset- all where I had left them.  Long ago and far away.

On younger trips up the hill, there was something I never noticed, never named, never saw from this vantage point til tonight.  To the south, beyond the big island, stretching its shoulders on the horizon- was a tall island.  Flattened by distance, it was still a profile I would know anywhere.  Home.  Across miles of crisp autumn air, and in the fast fading light, it was there for me to look at.   On that island, there's a red and white Ford pickup parked at the town landing by the tomalley shop.  There is a gray cat in a saltbox house at the base of another rock outcropping, a cat who is trying to figure out how to break into the new automatic feeder.  There's a black and white cat who will sleep and eat in the cab of a model T truck.  There's a journal and a box of chocolates on a table, that I forgot to take.  Tomatoes on vines in the garden- tomatoes I should have picked.

Two thousand miles- to the North, to the West, Dave is in a place I cannot even picture.  There's moss, I know.  And moose, he hopes.  I have neighbors here.  But I don't know them.  In that journal, on the table, Dave wrote "think of me, and I will be there."  (I paraphrase, since I can't refer to it, damn me and my rush to get out the door because of my reluctance to get out of bed)  So I called him to mind, and I walked with him a while.  Someday he will walk with me here, and I won't feel lonely.  He'll probably cook, and I will go to bed on something more nourishing than a Slim Fast shake and a frozen enchilada.  He'll talk to me, as comforting as the smell of mudflats, and the terror of a new job and life will diminish.  I will look into his face, and feel at home, because in his eyes I am not only known but welcome.

So yes, I came back- as many people don't.  To the same island, the same school- but for all that I might know some names, some faces, it is not comfortable, not home.  Not yet.  Sometimes home is provided (generally in a smile), sometimes home is something you just have to work at.  Again and again.

I'll crawl into bed tonight with a book, my faith (work+time=it'll be okay), and the image of this Friday when I will go home to the patient red truck,  my cats, the tomatoes, the journal and the chocolates.  Glad to see the neighbors I know.  And I will dream of next Friday, when Dave will walk toward the baggage claim in Portland- coming home to me.


      

Sleeping In

When I woke today, it was already light- all quiet but for the rain.  No alarm, no cats.  No Dave making coffee in the kitchen, singing nonsense songs about having become an indentured servant to a woman and two felines, or about how his sternman (me) needs to get out of bed.  Instead, he is still asleep, somewhere on the outskirts of Calgary, dreaming of his imminent moose hunt.

When I woke today, I didn't even need to get out of bed.  It's one of those weekends.  I could sleep through it, read through it, see no one, run away, watch the entire series of South Park, surf the internet until my eyes fell onto my keyboard- in the words of Terry Pratchett, the world is my mollusk...or, judging from the introverted options I listed, I am a mollusk.  No deeds to do, no promises to keep.  Not the sort of weekend you get very often once you qualify as an adult.  

So then there's the question: What to do with it?

I did roll out of bed, originally intending to crawl back into it.  I fed the cats, bade farewell to the contents of my bladder, and then turned to head back to bed.  And I probably would have made it back, except I compulsively looked at a clock.  6:25 am. 

The borderline. 

I could get up, have a nice pokey morning with coffee, and puttering.  Or I could sleep in.  In my nice bed, on a rainy morning.  But if I sleep in, will I ever get up?  My actual stated goals for these Daveless weekends were along the lines of "Oh, I am going to thoroughly clean the house" and "well maybe I will treat them like writing workshops..."  All very proper and productive. 

But there is a certain allure to sleeping in, even with the knowledge that going back to bed and sleeping until, say, 8am- would probably set a pattern whereby I would spend the weekend in some horizontal position, doing nothing more strenuous than producing oil with my scalp.  I know- I make that sound terrifically enticing, don't I? 

Clearly, since you are reading this, and since my foreshadowing kept no secrets, I did get up.  I have made it all the way down to the couch, with a rest stop at the Keurig.  Unfortunately, I have found my way under another comforter, and the cats are ostentatiously advertising the joys of napping. One has moved to my side, to transmit the sleeping sickness through touch and the lulling vibration of his purrs.  Why have I taken these demons into my home? 

Will I ever keep my eyes open long enough to burn the trash, take out the compost, vacuum and wash the floors, and totally reorganize the office?  So.  Much.  At.  Stake. 

So.  Sleepy.