mixed.

Our dog was up all night, restless, growling at something outside, laying his head on the bed and wagging his tail hard enough to shake the cats off, hoping that would wake me up. We walked at 2 am under cloudy skies, no sign of whatever he saw scratching around in the brush.  It is mid-february and 49 degrees, the daffodils are up, there are bug hatches and insectivores easily a month ahead of normal times. I spend my mornings dressing horses and collecting eggs. I see at least one hawk a day. Some part of me has turned towards a new adventure, and while it is not yet time to go, I can feel the traveling bone, the hobo gene as Jake called it yesterday.

Boris and I will have to see a surgeon soon about his injury, and he limps on his left front now too. The cyst that showed up soon after you left is larger now, and I wonder if it is messing with that leg, making him hobble up the steps. Your son told me how he wakes up sometimes expecting to be in his old room in our house, how it takes him a minute to realize he is not, and another to realize why. We talk about the sucker punch, how often it comes, how stunning and how hard. He has the closest thing to tears in his eyes as he ever has, which is almost none. I stand in the horse stable sobbing, yelling to nobody that this isn't right, that I don't understand. This is our anniversary week, the days of seven years ago laid over the events of 2 years, 7 months, and one week ago - both ending on sunday. I would do it all again, every second. I know you know I would. I don't know that you would let me, but that is how I roll. That is how I love.

There are hawks and horses and traveling bones, sore dogs who make me worry. There are new adventures which make me wonder if I will find you more in them, feel you more in them, as I am more like me. It's a mixed bag all this. I miss you. I miss you very much. Happy anniversary my love. I miss you very much.




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excerpt

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Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road,
the sun and the moon
will continue to shine.

Thich Nhat Hanh

from here

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sunday the 12th comes again

Well, no. Really it doesn't. That Sunday the 12th will not come around again.
But is a Sunday the 12th.


Anyway. All I am writing to say is that wonder, even a little bit of wonder,
is apparently a powerful thing.


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stupid fb

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looking through new pictures
posted by our friends
on vacation, again, in mexico
happy, smiling, glowing,
together.

And I can't ever have that with you again.



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tells

I woke up the other day thinking of Decatur. The year matt and I met, before we met, a whole lot of "random" occurrences happened that made me think moving to georgia was the right thing, so I quit my job and gave notice to my landlord. As soon as I did that, ye olde georgia plan fell apart. What I needed, apparently, was a push to quit the job I hated. That worked. Anyway, I hadn't thought of georgia in the years since, except in an off-hand way to myself, like code: oh, you mean I should do this like you mean I should move to georgia.

So it was odd to have Decatur so clearly in my mind a couple days ago, in line with the current level of Wondering going on. I actually spent a few hours revisiting the websites of places I'd found interesting, checking satellite maps of the area looking for water access for boris and I. I had to intentionally not think about what I was doing - not look directly at what looking at new places to live includes: leaving our home, actually living this life - all that. The fact that I am wondering at all is pretty astonishing. I am not anywhere near ready to be considering any movement, let alone taking it, but the wonder is a big thing.

So there's that.

I told the woman I occasionally farm-sit for that I was getting laid off and asked if she would keep her ears open for me. Three days ago, she called to tell me a friend of hers needed help in her stables, and might be calling. Said woman called, and I went over there this morning. Hadn't even occurred to me that P would have likely told her my "status," but I was wary of being asked too much about myself.

J was very talkative for the first hour or so, barely a breath - I didn't need my normal reminders-to-self to turn the focus away from me and onto the other person so the personal questions would be deflected. As she talked, I noticed a wide gold ring on her right hand, and I thought - she's a widow. But then I figured, nah, lots of people wear rings on both hands.

She was sifting the stall bedding, her bird-dogs bringing wood block dummies and dropping them at my feet. I said something about how our dog does that with tennis balls. She asked something about Boris, then suddenly stopped shoveling and said - "P told me." Damn. My eyes welled up - it takes nothing. Before I could say anything back, she said "I was widowed too. I'm a war widow." While I was trying fiercely to not openly sob, I missed some of the details, but I heard her say that the man she is married to now took care of her husband's body, and that her now-husband's wife died of cancer. She said, "I wish I could tell you it gets better. It gets easier, but not really better. But I will tell you - they never go away. They never leave. I know mike is right here, when I need him to be."

I was there for another hour or so, talking about various things. Of course, in my head, I was trying to do the math and figure out how long she had been widowed, listening for clues and such (best guess - somewhere between 22 and 28 years). I realized I've never actually spoken with someone who was widowed young and is further along this road than I am. She was neither chipper about the whole thing ("it all worked out for the best") nor bitter and angry. While we are different people in many ways, there was enough resonance there to be really comforting to me. She told me she turned to the horses when her husband died. When I said I quit being a therapist when matt died, she said - "of course. You have no tolerance for whining or lying or any of the messes people choose to get themselves into. Animals don't do that."

The other interesting news is that last week, I was farm-sitting for P. On the way home, I decided to take a road I hadn't been on before. Driving down it, I saw a Very Expensive Looking farm and thought - man, where do they get that kind of money, and - I wonder if they need any help. So whose house was I at today? Down what road and at which farm? Right.

Anyway. An intense and comforting and bewildering morning.

                - no matter how bleak and hard it gets, there is a force of love still here.



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