The moon followed us home last night.
We went to a movie for an impromptu date-night. After pasta, with the dishes still on the table, we ran to make the 7:45 showing.
We saw
and if you want to have a really good time, you'll go see it too.
(You're welcome.)
And then I watched the half-moon follow us home from my car window.
And thought about how many ways there are to tell a story.
(If you go see that movie you'll know what I mean. You're welcome, again.)
And then I lay in bed next to David and after five days at Girl's Camp remembered to be grateful for my bed and my husband and my circa 1988 shower, and then I reviewed my day.
We started cleaning the house, but got distracted cleaning out the drawers for the looming school year. The process was interrupted when I realized we needed a few drawer organizers, but didn't have the heart to face the heat and run to Target. As we sorted through candy wrappers and crumpled book marks and shoes that no longer fit, I asked the kids about their activities in the fall. Which required a trip to the internet. By then, everyone was hungry and so I went to the cupboards, but they were bare except for craisins and stale croutons and a sticky jar of nutella. So we stopped everything while I showered and went to the store. I very nearly melted by the time I brought in the groceries and felt amazing for just getting them put away. So I rested a bit and moved the laundry one more station and helped the girls start an art project. By then it was time to start dinner and I listened to Adele with my apron on while the sausage and onions browned in my pan. Ethan talked me into a game of Go Fish and then David was home.
Before I went to bed I went around and kissed my children in the dark. The vacuum was still out and the contents of all the drawers sat in little piles around their rooms. The laundry was only half done and all of it unfolded. The bathrooms never got started and the floors still made sticky noises when I walked across them. The dinner dishes sat in the kitchen sink and the detritus from the bottom of everyone's backpack was in a sad little pile on the counter.
He asked me how I was feeling.
I said, "It's complicated."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning you have an early meeting in the morning and so you don't have time to hear it all."
"Can you give me the gist?"
"No. I'd have to sort it all out first."
He gave up then and started kissing me.
But it's something like this:
The fall is coming. If not on the thermometer, then on the calendar. And with it, my doubts are returning. My inadequacies. My worries. The questioning and disdainful voices in my head. And yes, my regrets. They are returning from their summer holiday. I can hear them rearranging the drawers in my head. Making room. Leaving freedom and hedonism and possibility and joy and confidence in a grubby little pile on the shelves of my memory.
What, too maudlin for a Wednesday morning?
I'm just getting started. (David was right to interrupt me with kissing.)
I only have 13 days left.
And that seems very unlucky, indeed.
