Mom, he keeps hitting me
There have been so many moments in recent weeks that I wanted to savor. To have last long enough that I could weave some spell and turn them into trinkets to tuck away in a pocket and bring home where I could then take them out and hold them gently in my warm hands and feel their pulse and vitality. Life is flying past so quickly and I can hardly click the shutter down on my own thoughts. Though I try, I really do.
But I’m also feeling slow and tired and only just a little bit recovered from getting so sick. I get home from work, make dinner and then try to remember all of the lovely little things I thought of over the day. Things I want to share with you. Things that made me laugh or made me think just a little bit harder about how I am in the world. The speeding world.
Evening isn’t my best time for writing. I’m looking at the clock inching its way towards 8 pm right now and thinking little hurry up thoughts to myself. Little type faster thoughts. Because just below the surface of all of the other thoughts and ideas that clamor for my attention is the constant, beckoning thrum of the dream-time. All I want to do is sleep. I think all day about climbing onto my high king mattress and pulling the cotton sheets and the heavy flannel quilt my mother made for us up to my chin, a book leaning against the pillow on my tummy, my eyes growing heavier until I drift off. I zoom through the days and look over my shoulder at the setting sun and at the hurried moments, the missed bits with the kids and the mate, and I wonder. What if?
And morning comes too soon. We do it all again.
I wanted to tell you about the trip, but the words just aren’t there right now. These other ones were in the way, and somehow the images I captured along the road illustrate it all too perfectly. I carry the pictures of the friends and family I had the good fortune to spend time with inside of me because I forgot to pick up the camera and focused instead on being with them with every available bit of myself. So bear with me over the next week or so as I figure out what the hell I’m trying to say and show you a bunch of photos of the world we zoomed through at 70 mph.
Oh, and Lila wants to know if you think she’s very pretty…
and also…are we there yet?
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
November 28th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
1. “Very pretty” might not be the phrase I’d choose for that particular look.
2. All I want to do is sleep. I’m thinking it’s that the season finally changed.
3. Did you come out my way again without telling me?! Not that I would have had time either…
November 29th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Did we perhaps pass each other going opposite ways on 90? We returned to Syracuse to find surprisingly less snow than we left in Hudson. Hope you sleep well tonight.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:20 am
What an oddly peaceful post. I’ve only been up a couple of hours, but I want to go back to bed now. Except I’d be afraid of having nightmares of the sightless child, who I’m sure is quite lovely when her eyes are back in her head.
You have a wonderful way with words. I hope you fully recover from being sick and enjoy the holiday season.