I am not wishing to be an anchoress. I am not counting on anything. I am remembering learning to swim--no metaphor--at the Bambi Motel, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. If this is pride, then sometimes I too am amazed my soul stays in my body.

- Mary Ann Samyn, "From The Little Book of Female Mystics"

So much has happened, continues to happen, here. I had forgotten that a heart could hurt and love equally and at the same time, or maybe I just think I ever knew. And this is only proof of some personal evolution. I don't really care what it is or why it is or why it lingers here, or how much worse it might be without prayer flags and meditations. I just want it to leave, to do its work and leave us better off.

As for the things I haven't been able to say for myself, to myself, a blitz of second hand positivity may save me. Someone unexpected told me to envision the things that I want from this life, to be who I am, and also that I'm right to want this huge thing that now feels impossible--a light among darkness.

And in the meantime, I am working to loosen my grip just so the knuckles find their color again, just so my feet become mobile. I am trying not to count on anything.

All's well that ends well.

The long of it is logged in days and months and thousands of miles, and the short of it can be summed up in a mere two words:

he's home!

Deployment concluded.

Sundays

...are our "thing." Some couples travel or participate in extreme sports together but the thing that we most love to do is wring every drop of rest and relaxation out of Sundays. I used to sleep in with him but as deployment got nearer, I started not being able to stay in bed past 8am. And since PT calls him into work really early every other day, save Saturdays, he doesn't want to budge before mid-morning and I'm okay with that. So if I get up early I do my thing until the day draws him out from under the covers, and if we both sleep in...well, you know.

We almost always make breakfast together, which is one of the most critical elements of our Sunday experience. Before he moved to The House of a Thousand Males, he would wow me with the most incredible omelets filled with whatever was left over from our week of dinners. Omelets being one of my culinary weaknesses, I am always fascinated by the taste and presentation he can produce, and yet he always thinks I'm humoring him when I tell him that he'll forever be the omelet maker of this couple. We brew up some coffee, sit leg-to-leg on the couch and find something mindlessly entertaining to watch until we're finished. My coffee is always hardly touched because I'm one of those one-task-at-a-time eaters but it will wait for me on the corner of the coffee table until later.

Later comes when we decide it's time for lunch or errands or both. I will heat up the morning's brew to take along and without fail I will spill it in his truck. There is an ill enforced ban issued on open containers in The Monster (truck). He will grab whatever is in the back - a dirty t-shirt, sweats, the occasional paper towel - to treat my havoc and he will roll his eyes and comment in a humorously exasperating tone. Then we leave down his street for an army supply store or the book store or Walgreens or the range. Maybe we'll see a movie or rent one, and eventually we find our way back [home is a relative term]. I'll make dinner, he'll tell me it's amazing, then we do homework or watch a movie or he packs for the next thing.

There isn't a thing that makes this routine special except that it taps into a kind of normal that only shows itself on rare occasions. The Army keeps life in a perpetual spin. Sundays are anchors in a constant barrage of anything-goes.

i saw a modest dream, the kind that can't speak up

There is a story to tell, though it hasn't found its way through me yet. It hasn't formed the words clearly enough. They are still unfolding and forming into cohesive groups as I type. I work in phases like my father - life becoming a series of desperate love affairs quickly burning down the wicks that bore them until there is no more fuel. Maybe that's all this is too, a thing to keep me warm at night, an exciting idea whose end is deliciously unknown. Or worse perhaps, this is my True North.

I am a product of a swarm of things, but as my dad reminded me the other day, "I guess you can't take the country out of the girl." Part of me cringes and withdraws from those words, the part that still lusts after a tiny, 1000 flight walk-up in Manhattan, the bustle, the peace-like-waves of hurried traffic, the need for human life tucked closely around me. And yet time and time again, no matter what my heart is most currently fixed on, I arrive at the question: Why are my loves and inclinations unprofitable desires? Ah, the prompt.

[and as I proof what's written so far, I can see a difference in my headspace, that I like very much]

Let me tell you about the limbs that grew before me. My mother. One of my earliest memories is picking peaches with her before I tortured the tree with my need to climb it, and it died and rotted. Making cobbler in the kitchen with brown perpendicular linoleum rectangles and her hair, curly. She would spend what seemed like days in her gardens, always in that lavender terry-cloth get-up, shorts and tube top connected, slender work gloves and sun visor. In those memories her hair is also curly. Her bounty would be bright roses and okra, bell peppers, tomatoes, summer squash. Cooking the harvest promoted such blissful Southern staples as fried green tomatoes and fried squash, and fried okra for that matter. And when it wasn't gardening season I would still watch her move in the kitchen. No matter how many hours in the week she worked, dinner was always relatively homemade. As I got older she developed an affinity for figs, and soon we had numerous fruit bearing trees growing along the chimney side of the house. She made preserves, although I can't recall this being an intensive process, so there may not have been bundles of them. Nevertheless, this was very normal in my existence, not critical or praised like faith from the stem or from the hands, but performed like rituals with great reverence and joy.

My late great aunt, Mom's side. Influenced by The Depression, she developed a need to horde, cultivate and feed. Another dated memory is being put in a highchair hooked to a diner table in her self-named restaurant. She manned the register and the kitchen simultaneously, along with several acres of row gardens heavy with everything: grapevines, cherry trees, vegetable plants, nuts, fruits, leafy greens, etc., etc. And canning was an event, a near daily event. I still have jars in my pantry waiting for the right rainy day to make peach pie with her filling, and green beans that rival anything store bought. She did it all even until the end. After a partially paralyzing stroke the walker accompanied her garden work, and the kitchen was never empty of something earthy and quaint in its conception, but radiantly and perfectly full of Home. She served humanity from the ground and from humble hands.

These are the only ones that I know or have known. I hear that my mom's mom was quite thrifty as well, and my dad's mom had the chickens that I want now. Maybe he's right. Maybe some things are so vital to a person's make up that they can't be denied. This somehow seems to edge up awfully close to a vast pondering of the meaning of life. My "mother in law" asked if I expected the economy to get bad enough to warrant all of this simplifying, which caused to me to look at my motives. The economy was never behind it. I answered that part quickly and with ease. That explanation is a part of the story that hasn't quite formulated. There is something crucial feeling in watching a seed grow or kneading dough that will become the foundation of sandwiches, and in knowing that if all the world fell down around us, I would, in some small capacity, be able. And besides, it's in my blood. This, whatever it is becoming, feels like faith and purpose, like joy.

30 of 31: back home

My alarm, or rather my army wife friend's alarm spun up a Keith Urban CD at 5am. I woke up somewhat rested, which only furthers my belief that my mattress is dunzo, took a shower, got dressed, packed almost everything (except the black wedges I left behind) and headed for the airport. By 9:45am I was back in my driveway, ready to watch Baby Girl before class.

New Orleans was a great little get away. Friday night I was welcomed with an invitation to her sister's house for a crawfish boil. Very interesting, very tasty, very local. Saturday we got coffee and bagels, pedicures, did a little shopping, lunched in the French Quarter at Pat O'Brien's, went for a walk by Lake Pontchartrain, had dinner at Jacque-Imo's and passed out in her living room while talking. Sunday was a little less busy. We got coffee again and went walking in a park near Tulane, hung out at Borders for a while, killed ourselves with a cardio kickboxing dvd, lounged at a neighborhood bar on the patio with sunshine and strawberry Abita beers, ate leftovers, read a bit, stopped by TCBY and watched Twilight at her sister's house. The movie was terrible, but the weekend was quite relaxing.

When I walked in my house, it had assumed the temperature of the flighty Spring weather, a delicious 34 degrees. I quickly turned up the heat and checked on my seeds. Many are still little containers of dirt, but my spinach is sprouting into delicate green tendrils. It was an incredibly exciting discovery, which says a lot about my increasing level of dullness. I can't wait for The Staff Sergeant to come home. I'm probably not actually super interesting, but he makes me feel so much more substantial. At any rate, I've got spinach in the works. I'm still holding out hope for the other veggies and herbs.

I also took a walk today, found a recipe for a homemade facial toner, picked up organic potting soil from a small local hardware store and went by the grocery for a few things I needed to complete my dinner attempt at Dahl with brown rice. I still need to get some poetry homework finished before spending tomorrow with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and I have my fingers crossed that I'll get a call from a certain soldier before the day is done. Right now I'm going to finish my wine and chocolate covered soy nuts before mixing up my rosemary and apple cider vinegar toner. Hopefully today's high spirits and productivity are telling for the pace of the week.

Now I picture things

He called today and my fingers startled.  I was in class in the midst of a heated discussion of Wordworth's "Prelude."  I was feigning some level of interest with my mind and my hands wrapped around a phone clasped beneath the table, not the epic, not the story.  

It had been five days (which maybe isn't that long considering deployment) but it was long enough to make an anxious woman out of me.  Last week was more challenging than the ones before.  Late at night I ached for him, I still ache for him - just to make faces at me from the other side of the sofa or grab me in the kitchen for an exaggerated dip, the crown of my head nearly brushing the floor, or the word trying to glide from his lips, "sweetheart."  

I've gotten used to feeling nothing, but it isn't me.   Even though I wear it, it feels funny on.  Then on the phone he thanked me for this silly card I sent a month ago, sprayed with my scent and covered in lipstick kisses.  He said that it made his day and despite his delayed gratitude he wanted me to know.  There is so little of us in this condition.  We are maintaining what exists when he's home and so the blips of thoughtfulness have a fracturing effect.  This painful equilibrium crumbles so that I can hear him again in my thoughts.  

He says, "That wet towel on the bed will mildew."   

He says, "Half a jar of Nutella will spoil dinner."

And, "Sweet dreams.  I love you."

The road to Domestic Goddesstry continues...

I've had a new burst of domestic inspiration in the last day or two, most of which followed the great triumph of taming my dining room.  It wasn't that it was waiting, packed in tidy boxes, but instead that the whole house had been unpacked in that single room and never again touched.  But now I can breathe easy and walk taller.  It has been rescued from disaster.  

My focus has now turned to streamlining it's beauty.  The bar needs to be stained and I'm hunting down a mini-fridge for mixers and white wine; it will fit just bellow the bar/counter/recycled IKEA shelf.  I took some art to Hobby Lobby to have it framed for wall accessorizing, picked up some silk Gerber daisies for the table, and the super cutest best part - big gold letters in his and my first initials with a swirly "&" to go between them.  I think they will have to hang above my bar-in-progress, the pièce de résistance.  The Container Store (online) is next.  I need to find some hardware for holding bottles and barware.

But before that, I wanted to share these recipes from this morning's Rescue Chef.  This menu most certainly screams, "Welcome home, Sweetheart!" especially since I don't eat red meat.  It will reappear for a certain homecoming-to-be later this year-- 

• Flaming Filet Mignon with Chive Butter
  
• Pan-fried Asparagus with Shallots
  
• Potato Gratin "Boome-style"
  
• Molten Chocolate Baby Cakes
  

Home-sick

I wonder if it's just me that ever feels this kind of weightlessness, like tugging on strings that never pull tight--just small.  Tonight I think that I could jump up and down and shout without acknowledgement from the universe.  And really this is just about realizing how little control I can possibly have at all.  

I'm not sure to what I should attribute this existential panic.  Maybe realizing that he will always leave as long as he does this.  Or perhaps it came when I concluded that the emails I send him don't really get checked, and I can't call and that makes me feel completely...powerless.  It could be a number of other things, really, but those are the likely culprits this time around*.  

Everything here is a little off balance.  I like to think that I've mastered this, that I am exempt from any more rough days and that the short calls I do get are perfectly enough.  When I overlook the telling symptoms that a hard night is coming, I not only feel the initial want for him, but am then also angered for being caught off guard.  This is another one of those nights.  I can be found planted on my sofa in sweats, dwelling on the stories he doesn't get to hear.  Those that he does are abridged or outlined with lost punch lines and a diminishing presence of laughter.  They feel boiled down to hurried transactions, and knowing that he doesn't read the heartfelt emails only adds to my overall sense of impotence.  I am pretty much an ineffective little thread in this great, grand scheme and I hate that.  He can call me, but I cannot reach him even through methods that should.  I am cookies and quickly penned notes with smiley faces, minor and inessential.

-------------------------------------------------------

*this panic surrounding things I cannot control is my usual disposition 

It hasn't felt like home [before you]

The end of another day, and a busy one, busier than most Mondays. I stayed at his place last night to do laundry, and yes, also to be around his stuff. But I overslept and had a babysitting commitment this morning. Even rushing I got my coffee made and drove his monster truck to keep the battery charged. I pulled in a mere seconds before Jen and baby, luckily. Then an hour coaxing her stand, and because we are both so fashion forward, Baby Girl and I paid our daily homage to What Not to Wear.

After Children's Hour at Chez Moi, I had to go back to his house to get my clean clothes and drop off his gas-guzzler...and take the trash to the dump before my afternoon class. I also stopped by an antique store to look for a subject for my latest project idea--a bar for my giant, beautiful dining room.  In one of the latest Domino issues, they made a bookshelf into a bar/sideboard.  Something kind of like this:

(thanks apartmenttherapy.com)

...except I want a dark wood for the outside and an orange background, something warm and pumpkin-ish, not periwinkle.  I devised a plan for said [untouched] dining room: if I can get myself excited enough about decorating it, then I will surely be compelled to fill the china cabinets with china and stemware currently forgotten in boxes, and to clear off my sprawling dining table turned catch-all and care-package-central.  To accomplish this task I raided Pier 1 this weekend, stocking up on an armful of [fake] poppies and varied greens and four curtain panels in rich browns and firey red-oranges.  It's the final room to be tackled and my favorite, not to sound like the rest of the house is finished.  My bedroom is painfully in need of painting and cleaning, and all of those clothes that hang so gracefully on the closet bar are still scattered in my floor.  Still, the dining room has been neglected and it's time to wrap up this "getting settled" bit.  

I got to give The Staff Sergeant a virtual tour when we spoke via chat/webcam.  He said that the living room at least, looked completely different in a good way, which made my efforts seem momentarily worthwhile.  Until it's all finished, I power on.  I've hung curtains continuously for weeks...ok, maybe not exactly continuously, and found places for crap that laid homeless and lost in the corners of chaotic rooms.  All of this has reminded me of how much I dislike the moving process, and yet I know within a year I'll be doing it all again.

How good is a man that lets you look past the strife of separation, of uprooting, of packing all the minuscule pieces of your existence painstakingly in boxes to leave places that feel like home for new uncharted ones and then each night, also leaves you drifting off to sleep with a smile? 

I feel like the mess of the new house, completely un-unpacked with warped floors. Sometimes the harshly misaligned door frames and dips and crests of deep, blue carpet make that place feel disorienting, like living inside a fun house. I, too, appear normal from the curb and unaffected by shifting and compacting ground. But on the inside, my mind must be reshaping with these changes, buckling and bending like the old hard wood in the dining room.

Next week I'll get to the unlabeled boxes scattered among the cavities of my house, slice through the packing tape that was found only in time to seal some. And maybe I'll measure the windows, finally, to hang curtains instead of fitted sheets from finishing nails hammered into old plaster with the heel of a patten flat. I'll move furniture into sensible groupings where they aid in the fluid movement of my traffic patterns [only], and I will stack my books against each other, cozy in the arms of bookshelves, plates in kitschy strawberry cabinets. All the while, the floors will flex and sag still, like they have for years and years and years, and my heart will ache like the contoured bones of my house the first time the earth settled beneath its foundation.

The good news is that it still stands. While its doors have been shaved into angled forms and most of my furniture is poised on three legs, there is still a house that has seen the whole world evolve into something quite different than it was. I don't feel nearly as strong as the boards that built it or the hard plaster that encased it, though. I don't feel as strong as everyone tells me I have to be. I don't feel strong at all, really.

on to something new [ready or not]

I have so much to say and so little energy and liberty to etch it all across this screen.  Christmas left something to be desired, new year's eve, however was perfect -- more perfect than perfect.  This life has a way of letting one glaze every moment with high-gloss hyper-perfection, given the right timing and circumstance.  Each breath and smile is caught and archived, pinned like fragile specimens behind glassy walls, slow motion memories with over-pronounced dialogue and historical inaccuracy.  

I err most often on optimism -- foolish, really.  I imagine the still frames more richly colored, sugary and scripted.  For example, I omit certain attempts at death-by-Dorito-consumption and possible engagement rings (on my mother's finger), large life-engulfing trunks, drunken welcome-homes, all consuming guilt, the kind of "good bye" that truly has the power to grind one's heart to dust.  I have added brightly adorned Christmas trees, comfort and relaxation, smiles, security.  Next year will be just long enough for my mind to fully buy into all of those forged memories and I will probably be surprised when it plays out just the same.  

Uhh...err.  It seems that I'm just stopping in for one of my usual, now sporadic visits.  And in a way, perhaps it's fitting that not even this place feels like home anymore.  The one thing I want most out of life, the one driving force that keeps me clinging to the steadiness of earth when everything else in the world spins wildly -- Home, and I may have never felt more Home-less.  My apartment has grown stale and I don't really stay there much, his place feels most familiar but I'm acutely aware that it isn't mine, there aren't my things in the closets and cabinets, and of course, there's the house, still under construction, the bane of my existence, holding a car load of crap I hauled around for a while and an address I hesitate to actually use.  I'm hesitant to have anything of import attached to that place since it seems that my landlord's promises are empty...an understatement.  

Tonight it's just me and any one of those three choices - a bed so mine that the crest of my body is pressed deep into the mattress, the empty, dishonest walls of an old bungalow where I could curl up in a corner of one of the many vacant rooms, or here: burrowed into pure, warm comfort, a pool where our tributary veins run partially together, picking the peanut butter cups out of his Moose Tracks, dressed in an oversized PT shirt, my favorite.  He isn't here but he is, he is everywhere in this room and the next and in the shower.  In a few hours I'll climb a flight and a half of stairs and melt into sleep and it will feel like he's the big spoon because his essence lingers like a decadent flavor.  

This is the last preview. 

[all we can do is keep breathing.]

someone's in the kitchen...

Our sense of seasons in the South is different than in other regions. We only sort of have four of them: 6 months of summer, 4 months of mild-winter, 1 week of spring, 1 week of fall and at least 6 weeks of wild-card weather amid the hinges of definite change. So it was strange and luxurious when Summer tapered off many weeks earlier than expected and spared us August's usual heat advisories and 300% humidity. An eerie cool graced September long before the trees became rusty and the days became notably abbreviated. Only now the mornings and evenings are marked with a reliable chill and I've pulled out my lazy hoodies and I've started craving apples and steamy drinks and comfort food and NYC. Something about Autumn feels like home and it brings about a force that I cannot fight, drawing me to the kitchen, making my fingers ten tireless little chefs.

Tonight I'm paying homage to my roots with black-eyed pea stew and cornbread (and Woodchuck draft cider). I have wild hopes that it will indeed make you wanna slap your grandma!  Cheers to Autumn and southern de-liciousness!

*kudos cookinglight.com

compromise

I've begun to contemplate where the line draws itself, or where I've managed to draw it unconsciously, while sleepwalking or severely distracted.  I don't remember marking it in the dirt or qualifying either side of it.  Maybe it is my fault for not taking into account the boundaries that I set in place and didn't share or acknowledge.  

Compromise.  This is a thought bleeding through all of my others, every word I read, mile I devour, every breath and television show and goodnight kiss.  There is a line; on one side is mutual respect, sharing and necessity and on the other you become a traitor to self.

When does compromise become compromising?

I cannot deny who I am and how far removed it is from The Staff Sergeant.  Think of a personality trait, any one of them, any conviction or stance on the world and we appear at far ends of the pendulum's swing.  I've always appreciated that about us, how his perspective challenges mine, how he is a catalyst for me to think beyond myself and the ways that come easily to me.  Think of us as the Super Soldier and the Earth Child, though you may wonder how we ever managed to attract to one another I've always thought that we had roots in the same center, yet we spiraled outward in separate directions.  When you come from the same place, Home is easily recognized.  

Perhaps it's politics: the way I shape myself around his contours like a bead of mercury. because I'm a girl. because I want him to love me. because I can keep the surge of myself tamed for a time and I do. because I don't believe that I'm deserving. because the super soldier having room for the social-rights-fighting-world-saving-peace-love-and-Obama-supporting earth child would be a bright, strobing anomaly [with a mandated caution against seizures].

That is what scares the spirit out of me.

I don't believe that we have to agree on all points.  I don't even want him to be like me.  If he echoed my voice, every word, we would bore ourselves into a puddle of empty meaning.  But I am all of those opposing pieces and I fear that maybe they won't mix.  I have a hard time knowing when the jokes are laced with truth or when they are hollow shells of air spent for no real reason, or if that is even possible.  I've stopped entirely caging myself and have begun releasing small drips to float like oil to the surface.  I self-imposed the captivity, compromising constraints.  I dimmed the deep-hued dirt from whence I sprouted.  These are my own guilty endeavors, and as they recede I can only hope that the training has paid off, that our stitching really is war-strong.

For the past month or so I've been paying homage to Utopian societies, or maybe more accurately labeled, communal living.  There are several criteria missing for this to qualify as "Utopian."  And by that I mean equal work loads and division of property.  Some days, though it would be a great exaggeration to say it, I feel like I'm living with the whole army.  I'm not complaining, just observing the very small me-ness among so much man-ness.

But this morning I'm the only one awake in what seems like miles of silent rooms.  The burning autumn early sun pours through open blinds, and even still this living room bites with the briskness of seasons turning.  Coffee brews from the other room, a warm, rich sweetness awaiting to catch between the cup of my hands.  Two appliances hum lulling mantras and we meditate.  

I am the space around me, not a guest.

I have forgotten how I need my own space every now and then, how otherwise, my layers begin to peel apart.  So this, I am rolling in, coating my skin in like dark mud.  I won't attempt to wake him, he's tired from another long week of work anyway; the others are preoccupied.  

highways and bye-ways

On Friday I met with my non-fiction professor to discuss an idea for an independent study next summer. I'm not sure how it came to me, but on my way to class the thought congealed: travel writing; a month long road trip. She loved it!

I'm thinking, roughly, 6000 miles on $5000.

The answer to a quarter-life crisis?

A liberation from responsibility and sense?

For what and why?

To find my true self.

To stumble upon Home in pure form.

It doesn't sound crazy in my head, though the money will be a trial. They say, "if there's a will, there's a way." And there's time to consider logistics and funding. I'm not going to mask my lust for it nor will I deny how mesmerizing the day dreams have been. Thirty days to see and taste and smell half of America, or more if I wanted. Thirty days to reinvent my purpose, my place, my routine. Thirty days of distraction from all that is "fair" [in love and war]. And to write it, for credit no less? This is why I can't give up higher education. The Man would never allow such a blatant severing of strings. Ah!, freedom and The Road...

show's over

Ah!, the sweet relief of life returned to it's eccentric and unconventional Normal. I feel like I've trekked the earth, lived lifetimes upon lifetimes, over-driven my mental driver, and I've had it easy. I could explain the last four days from my perspective, but it would truly be unjust. You'll never meet another man comparable to my soldier. Never. And I'm not just being biased. To do the things that he does, to simply be capable of enduring his Army is plainly out of [my] reach.

Now subjects flow to me like rivers after rain - I could use my blank space to expound on an array of thoughts. Choice being one that comes to mind. I could choose the self aggrandizing road and boast of newfound strength, pride, and tenacity. But my heart is humbled tonight by him alone. I feel sad that most of you will never know him as more than a character of this blog, an anonymous Staff Sergeant in a vast sea of camouflage. You have no idea of the man that he is. You have no idea how much respect he commands, how much admiration he summons and reserve he carries. He is the epitome of greatness and I am gifted each day to stand beside him. To this praise, he would arm himself with a snarkish remark and tell me that he's glad he has me fooled, but every word is truth.

I only wrote it 'cause I know he CAN'T be reading [now].

It happened last summer, too. Channels of information would barrel by, sideswiping me in the gossipy whirl of the newly engaged. I tried to let the confetti fall then with less effect, then when I was raw and refusing to heal. And now full on love also, I mask the sting of envy but artfully, more optimistically, more contented. I have found that I actually am glad for those embarking upon such a merging, in the same way I have grown to appreciate friend's whose soldiers have returned while mine remains away. It is one of the most grown-up lessons I've learned thus far, to be happy for others when the same place inside is filled with only echoes.

I'm one of those girls who dates with agenda, who loves with future visions, and scribbles a familiar first name with possible lasts [Mrs. The Staff Sergeant]. And for the first time, I am not met with similar views. I brought up the taboo language of Marriage once, too early of course. It blew up with a cacophony of offense and defense, blubbering and recoiling. We survived though.

- I'm sorry about last night.

- I'm sorry it scared me.

We carry with us the heavy weights of childhood impressions, though I am unsure why I want it so - the last name, the family-of-two, the Home anchor. But I do. I do ten-fold when he's gone and I'm weary from absence, and wondering, but pretty sure he doesn't think about Us that way. And week after week more futures spin by like trains with destinations I cannot see. Life works out how it should, I know, but there's no one I could imagine being more perfect than him. There is no one else I would willingly follow to the ends of the earth, through the obstacle course of Army, and war.

We're closing in on a year and maybe it seems rushed to claim readiness. But don't they say that when you know, you know?

Homesick.

The raw beams beneath my feet squeak after eras of wear, and the old warehouse is scattered with oscillating fans, having slept through the HVAC movement. I wander and weave between the labyrinth of booths if only to prod along the conversational ache of hardwood and to eavesdrop on the murmur of fan blades. I am home here among the rusted, paint-chipped, vintage silhouettes and the stories they would tell if words were theirs.

My mother likes to kid that she raised me in the back-roads antique shops of the South. Her "therapy", she called such pit-stops on these desolate highways. I used to loathe being dragged along the eternally winding aisles of cluttered shelves and ancient furniture. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to venture forth into the world of relics left over, but mostly my priorities were more child-like than antiques could entertain. Regardless, she would park her car, unbuckle me, and lead me inside. Those owners were just as humble as their shops, older and prone to the liberal use of Honey and Baby. I imagine they held their breath as I scampered in behind my mother's steps. None of these external factors would deter her, though, this was her salvation in a world of self-made chaos.

It's no wonder that my heart aged much more rapidly than it's vessel. Just as she reflects on my raising, I would swear I got lost in the mix of time. Even though I've long since moved out of my nest and away from her, some roots are too deep to shake loose. At the end of another work day, with the sour of homesick in my core, I set out in search of a refuge.

I found myself in the wondrous cave of this antique mall. I stood quiet before its floor-to-ceiling windows, open wide to swallow gulps of sunshine and breeze. To my right a big, white fan purred affections, smoothing back my hair in a maternal charade. I thought of summer days spent in my childhood home and the smell of Dad's fresh-cut grass slipping in between the honeycomb mesh of window screens. Then, there was a feeling of peace when nothing had yet hooked me, when I was still virginal and naive. I miss not worrying what I'm going to do with my life or how I will learn to survive the military staple of separation. It's strange how Home manifests itself in the old trinkets of other's pasts and in a man who wears camouflage and smells distinctly like Kenneth Cole.

back again

I'm up and showered and perusing the wealth of internet info for a breakfast recipe...something hearty, or maybe just something sweet. Pancakes, I think.

Behind me, he lays still in bed. After returning he swears that he isn't leaving the comfort of its pillow top and soft sheets for a time likened to eternity. I hear his shallow breaths of sleep and now and then he readjusts beneath the blankets. I could just now leave this screen, take only a few short steps and touch him for the mere sake of feeling his skin, if I wanted. He is home.

The funny, yet predictable phenomenon surrounding this to-and-fro pace is that anger and upset have a very limited hold when there he is walking toward you in the baggage claim belly of the airport. And when he wraps you up almost twice in his strong arms so much bigger than you or your own, their presence dwindles still. When he inhales the scent of your hair and tells you he loves you and missed you, and when he smiles in that slightly boy-ish way because he really does and really did, those emotional burs have long been shed. For better or worse, they are left on the worn tile floor to be swept away by the late-night cleaning crew. And I am happy to leave them there [unresolved] because giddy is a lot less thorny and doesn't prickle through the top of my socks.