Halcyon Days

I like to stay focused on the positive things as much as possible while writing this blog. There are many extraordinary things about living my life overseas, and I want THOSE things to shine through. There are, however, more than a few really difficult things about living my life overseas. Occupying the first spot on the Things That Are Difficult totem pole would be the fact that I am far away from Peter. It is insanely, crushingly difficult. SO, in an effort to paint an honest picture I thought I would share this little piece of stream-of-consciousness writing from my paper journal.

Enjoy.

In Aspen it snowed these big, huge flakes that were so light they never seemed to really land until suddenly the pathway to the house was snowed in and then you had to shovel until the handle snapped. And then at night the mist rose and we walked without mittens so I could feel your hand and my scarf got drenched in breath and I had to claw it away from my face so that you could hear my thoughts on our surroundings, on our future plans, and my voice sounded like a secret shriek because the air was thin and still like burst corneas and blisters and you challenged me to an icicle fight and a snow bank made the letter “P” where a car had been. We saw geodes like the points of pupils—alert, waiting, watching, dripping light like the puddle of my drool that was on your shoulder every morning, though I tried to wipe it off before you noticed. We looked at antiques for our future home and stepped over sleeping cats and the doilies in the window made me sneeze, and neither of us had time to write about any of this because we were too busy jumpstarting our lungs and rearranging pictures and sharing closets and making side-by-side footprints and wishing we could just skip over the year ahead of us with its grief and its want and its confusion. But there was no room for any of that in Aspen—just sleepy car rides and scalding hot springs and the kind of exercise that makes your lungs burn with health and your cheeks explode with superhuman capillaries and your eyes three shades lighter and I didn’t mind getting stuck on that mountain with the snow covering my skis and boots and my thighs trembling in exhaustion because I knew we’d make it down together once I found my way back to you and we’d plant another memory at the base of those mountains. Those mountains hold memories the same way that they hold the echo of gunfire where it fades at first but not completely and then you don’t know where it came from originally because its hum is suddenly all around you and it just sits on top of the world like oil without seeping in and it’s not just here it’s everywhere. And right now I’m sweating behind my knees in a place where the heat and the spice make the dogs howl at night and those mountains seem more than a little smug to me right now because they are still holding the sharpened points of my memories like bits of quartz and all I can see is a lovesick blur. And those mountains may be great at keeping memories but they are SHITTY at predicting the future because if I had known I wouldn’t see you for another six months and that you would have to go through your own personal hell alone I wouldn’t have smiled and kissed you and kinda shrugged. I would have screamed into your chest and refused to get on that plane and tried to attach myself to you as some sort of filter—simultaneously absorbing and dissolving all of the bad stuff so that all you would have to do is think, think, think. Pure unadulterated function. But instead I sleep with antacids and a bottle opener next to my bed and I cry snowflakes that evaporate into humidity and dream of mountains and air so thin that it snaps and I’m frozen in this hot, hot place and “I miss you” and “I love you” feel as inadequate as drool.