a month ago today, i left san francisco.
i got in my car in the still darkness of morning and expected to feel overwhelmingly emotional, leaving my newly totally empty house and the beautiful lurching hills and the proximity to so many people i've loved so long. but instead, i just felt like a girl in a car, wondering just how long it would take to get where i was going and at what point it was legitimate to stop for a treat or a pee. i was a girl in jean shorts and a baseball tee in an old dirty truck, setting out on the same roads i've driven for over ten years now.
anticipation and reflection are so much, and reality, often not much at all. it's what makes movies and songs so moving. they're condensed. they're encapsulated. they've filtered out all the passing moments of just sitting in a car, watching mile marker after mile marker bleed into one another, and all that's left are those crystalline moments of either intense joy or sadness and they seem like so much.
today doesn't seem like so much. it seems like today. it's wednesday. i'm wearing pajamas for pj day at school. i have thirty minutes to myself in between shuffling around maybe the craziest babies i've ever encountered. i'm drinking now cold coffee and eating the remains of a sandwich that sat in my sweltering car for at least an entire day. said car only intermittently works. i left dishes in the sink this morning.
this is what i do. i wake up early to snug nic and go for a run. we drink coffee and eat oatmeal that he makes while i shower. i go to work. he goes to school. we come home early evening, make something for dinner, watch a show or read a book together, then go to bed. we do it again.
i got in my car in the still darkness of morning and expected to feel overwhelmingly emotional, leaving my newly totally empty house and the beautiful lurching hills and the proximity to so many people i've loved so long. but instead, i just felt like a girl in a car, wondering just how long it would take to get where i was going and at what point it was legitimate to stop for a treat or a pee. i was a girl in jean shorts and a baseball tee in an old dirty truck, setting out on the same roads i've driven for over ten years now.
anticipation and reflection are so much, and reality, often not much at all. it's what makes movies and songs so moving. they're condensed. they're encapsulated. they've filtered out all the passing moments of just sitting in a car, watching mile marker after mile marker bleed into one another, and all that's left are those crystalline moments of either intense joy or sadness and they seem like so much.
today doesn't seem like so much. it seems like today. it's wednesday. i'm wearing pajamas for pj day at school. i have thirty minutes to myself in between shuffling around maybe the craziest babies i've ever encountered. i'm drinking now cold coffee and eating the remains of a sandwich that sat in my sweltering car for at least an entire day. said car only intermittently works. i left dishes in the sink this morning.
this is what i do. i wake up early to snug nic and go for a run. we drink coffee and eat oatmeal that he makes while i shower. i go to work. he goes to school. we come home early evening, make something for dinner, watch a show or read a book together, then go to bed. we do it again.
it's mundane in its consistency. it is not the adventure that i anticipated in coming here. i said that word so many times before leaving. adventure adventure adventure. it's not what I expected. and yet it is the biggest blessing.
this is what i needed. what i needed was not the movie version of life. not the beautiful, cinematic moments of twirling in circles, laughing with girlfriends, at free concerts in the park. not spontaneous snow days from work, spent at barbecue restaurants, drinking champagne for pretend birthdays. not festivals and parties and anniversary events.
i had that and it was fun and i love all those moments in retrospect. but it just got to be so much of that all the time that i completely and totally stopped relishing it.
it's not a celebration if you do it every day.
i needed everyday. i needed consistency and routine. i needed to be bored. i needed to get back to basics, to encounter them for the first time really, so i could relearn to relish what life is.
i don't concede to ennui; i don't want a thoughtless, routine life; i do not intend to just move through the days. but for now, this is good. this is cutting out all the excess to remind me what's important.
what's important? what's important is that i love coming home to this boy at the end of the day. what's important is that i want to kiss his back at night and hand him his towel after a shower in the morning. what's important is him doing homework and me, the dishes. what's important is a tiny gummy penguin surprise and a canvas bag in my car. what's important is small and simple and together. what's important is not grand or overly demonstrative. it's a small collection of moments that make everything else okay, that make the other bits cohesive.
this is my adventure. my adventure is resetting. my adventure is muting the overwrought daily celebration and learning that celebrating does not have to occur at such a high volume.
my adventure is being with a boy i love, taking care of myself, and that being enough. my adventure is letting that be enough.
