What an awful summer it was. What a horrible year. What a difficult year and a half. What a stressful nineteen and a half years. But as of today, summer is officially over. My annus horribilus is winding down, with progress reports from the condo restorations and my gaining acceptance over friends lost forever. And soon, very soon, the long distance part of my relationship will end. Not tomorrow, or even next week, but soon. And then, barring any major catastrophes on the horizon, the next stage of our lives can begin. We have so many plans for "after," some of which we are even acting on. (Did we really need a little mining claim in the mountains? Depends on who you ask, but most people wouldn't call it a need. Nonetheless, we have a contract on it, even though neither of us has set foot on it yet. Next year is going to be very interesting. I wonder whether there is gold in them thar hills. Or silver. Or copper, or anything else that would be worth the extracting. Probably not. Doesn't matter. The main thing we want from that hill is peace.) I do sort of wish I could just go to sleep for the next few weeks, waking up just in time to tidy up the house, and maybe clean out the garage before the man's jeep is fully restored from the body shop. I'm not sleeping well, and I haven't been for quite some time. I'm awake until two or three every morning, and I spend the hours between seven and ten in the morning waking up over and over, and trying to pretend the dogs aren't listening to every change in my breathing. I often think I should try to shift to a more standard sleep cycle, but there's always something preventing it. Sleeping straight through the next week wouldn't solve anything, but it sure would make these agonizing last days go faster.
We have all had those moments when a smell or a sound takes us back to a vivid memory from our past. The smell of bacon and coffee sends me to my grandparents' house all the time. There's a certain janitorial grade spray cleaner that places me back in high school or junior high, especially to those moments when I lay my sleepy head down on a desk, close enough that I could practically taste the residue from that cleaning foam. And I've gone on at length about how the sound of a really good drum line transports me to some of the greatest moments of my life, to the point where I can feel the wool suit making me sweat and my right ear starts to ring from the phantom shriek of a piccolo. Today I had one of those little time warps head me in the wrong direction. It was disconcerting, feeling displaced to a time and place that hasn't happened yet. But sure as I know my own name, I recognized my forever house. I was inside it. I could feel it around me, and I could almost see it. It smelled different, it sounded different, and there were people there I am not sure I have met yet. For perhaps a full second, I was there. It has left me beyond impatient to get on with my life. September is just in my way now. October is coming, and with it I will have a birthday, and a football trip, and the fire lit under my ass to prepare my nest for papa bird to come home. Forever is waiting for me, and I'm through with the obstacles trying to hold me back. Wake me when September ends.
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