I’m all wound up, but it’s a nice feeling, and one that hasn’t swept through in a while: I bought tickets to go to Oregon!
This trip was planned for last spring, something the whole family would do, when the whole family was configured differently. Then I’d zip down to California for a couple Scandinerdian storytelling gigs, then back to Minnesota with time to spare before the tourist season at the bed and breakfast.
Of course, we cancelled. Everything. On a pretty meta level, ultimately.
But I still have dear friends out there, my “other” parents, the people I brought boyfriends to for approval and problems to for relief. I last saw them when my child was still in diapers, back in 2011 just before we moved to India. That’s ten whole years. That’s a couple of lifetimes and a lot of moves and a career change and a (pending) divorce. I suspect that might also be a fair bit of gray hair, which is going to be a shock. (Spoiler, it won’t be on this blonde).
The last time I visited Bernie and Leland, they lived in Idaho. Leland had a different old Porsche he was fixing up, and a different little moped or motorcycle. Bernie had a different garden, and they had different cats.
It took me a long time to figure out what the fear was that was making it so hard to buy a ticket, plan a trip. (I’d intended to do it the second I had my housing situation figured out… then after I’d moved in… then…)
There’s a lot of emotion I’m letting out at a steady pace, like a spinner at a wheel, easing the roving so it twists into a smooth and steady strand. Going to see my two dearest people felt like too much, though I couldn’t put my finger on too much what.
Love.
Safety.
Support.
Joy.
It feels like the wheel will go flying, take off across the floor, out the doorway and down the road. And then what?
Maybe it’ll leave me with a tangle. Or a pile of roving I can’t put a shape to.
Or maybe I’m meant to take off running after it. Forget the endless spinning of meaning, the interminable making-use-of, and just go chase after now-free wheel until, exhausted, I give myself over to a meadow (where, perhaps in some synchronous message from the Divine, sheep are grazing), and lie in the sun on the green beneath the blue.
I think that’s what my ticket’s for, but there’s only one way to find out.
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