April 1, 2012

We spent the morning discussing options.  The options before us seem more suited to 23 year-olds, but they are ours to digest, discuss, and eventually discard.  The options will narrow into the thing, and the thing, undoubtably, will change. Discussing a cross-country move at 36 is maybe as much the same as different.  It still feels important, though in some ways less and some ways more.  What am I saying?

I'm saying that at 36 I understand that I may not have any more cross-country moves left in me. One more time. Let's pack the truck, load the dog, squeeze in backpacks and fishing poles, slide a computer behind the front seat, a cooler behind the passenger seat.  Fuck the couch. Settle in and drive.

The things that follow me are heavier now. By far. Book collections grow. You finally buy a real bed, one you won't leave behind. You like your cookware. The old dog will stay buried in the saddle of Sawtooths, give or take a few peaks. The new dog, dumber, thicker, does not understand life beyond one house in one town on a river. The old dog was not here to tell her this one house in one town on a river is not the way of things with these humans. So she will learn, as we worry and sweet-talk landlords. The dog doesn't shed, dig, bite, or piss. Never and ever.  

Choose well. Find good work. Make it last. Think of buying.  Make a baby? This year I learned that I don't have cancer, not there anyway. I learned that I will keep on writing, though never as much or as fast as I want and learned I will accomplish what I have to, though probably not much more, so it's necessary to put myself in positions in which great accomplishment is required. It's all so important, but it's true how they say the more things change.

Take, for instance, the sudden urge to throw Key West into the mix. Why not? Let's sell our down coats before we leave the Actual West. Shuffle our feet like the unhurried do and eat conch fritters every day. It turns out my husband and the internet can think of lots of reasons why-not-Key-West. Just like they can think of lots of reasons I don't need this baby elephant instead of the baby human that I'm not sure I want and my body isn't sure it will ever make anyway. Thankfully, less is important in the life and death way of my younger travels, and what a relief. I understand now that things settle.  They will or won't, these things, but the clock will keep ticking. 

Also, I wrote a poem today. It's more like a paragraph with line breaks, but it's a start. #NaPoMo