Roaming and Rambling

This first part is an account of what I wrote on the plane that brought me to this most magnificent place. Cat Stevens says we're only dancing on this earth for a short while, but he also says that the goodbye makes the journey harder still. Both are true and present in my mind and heart as I sit on this plane, right over the wing (my favorite place). My thoughts drift lightly among these wisps of clouds, and I'm wondering how strange these words will seem in a few months when I return to them on a homeward flight. I have never loved and never will love anything so much in my life as I love my family. Easily the hardest goodbye of my life as the airport man tells us that we must cut it short, and I'm holding on for dear life. I can still smell them on my clothes. My dad's handkerchief will be a constant in my pocket. In this quiet, this soft lull before the adventure truly begins, I can hear the worry knocking on a back door that I must choose to close as I jump out i...

"Brown Eyed Girl" is making me cry and there is no relief as "Listen to Her Heart" comes after on this Tom Petty Pandora station. In this moment I understand that there is no music safe from the emotional investment of packing. When I close my eyes I realize that these songs are the songs of an open 321 highway, the windows finally rolled down to a sweet afternoon of sunshine and that earth mountain smell, flying around that last curve into Boone, feeling home in the August air. Yeah, these are those songs. The good news is that I've filled one suitcase. It has been a tedious process of delicately holding each article of clothing and considering the memories, the people of my life that are woven carefully into the fabric. The nights that I don't quite clearly remember, but the shirts that still have Katie's arm around my shoulder as we stumble home. The baggy jeans I put on after finishing that half marathon, the most comfortable friends in the world,...

"Don't stay up all night." "Yes ma'am." "Goodnight punkin." "Goodnight mama." Sitting here between piles of clothes, pictures, things, surrounded by all these many columns of my life, I realize that I will miss these small and soft exchanges.  How do I carefully and completely zip myself inside these bags while managing to leave just the slightest gap for sunlight and learning and breathing in the midst of adventure's chaos? I keep telling everyone that I'm nervous, not as excited as everyone else wills me to be. I don't know if that's on the whole truth or not. Perhaps it's just the thought of not making that familiar right turn into my driveway, not taking that big deep breath of home as the dog maintains his faithful post of first greeter, not swinging my feet against old cabinets while talking to my mom and dad in the kitchen, not turning back familiar sheets before climbing into dreams. Perhaps it's that. ...