The days pass in variations of the same theme and so I rely on the natural world to delineate the passage of time. 

One morning I wake up and the leaves are gone, dawn shooting through the glass in a beam of colorless light. In terms of external parameters I don’t have much to show but in my inner world there are bulldozers and steamrollers. For some weeks now I’ve been regularly going to therapy—has my jumbled mind made it obvious? Every Tuesday at eleven I tremble in trepidation; every Tuesday at noon I am light and expansive. Diving inward and extrapolating is hard work, but my burdens aren’t as heavy and the darkness is cracked open by small rays of light. The truth is, I’d like to condense the experiences of my life into a tidy arc, then package them up with a bow and leave them all behind me. Ambiguity gives me a headache. I like firm endings and swift conclusions, or at least the ability to skip to the end for confirmation of a happy ending. But life’s not like the movies, is it?

Outside the wind is frantic and pulsing, sweeping away all evidence of life. I’m learning to create my own closure too. 

November, now—how? Wasn’t it just summer? I have a tenderness for this time of year. I turn into a little mouse, burrowing into the nourishment of stillness and quiet rhythms. I’m still discovering my purpose, but I know how to sit quietly and watch the ducks squabble and dunk their heads in the creek. I know how to kiss my husband and make dinners for my friends and walk slowly and thank the purple mountains and care diligently for the things in my life and create magic at Christmas and carve a soft spot for my family and provide for my dog the things she needs and watch the leaves outside my window turn green-gold. The world is so hard; I want to be soft and yielding. When I’m old will I be sad or will I just be relieved to simply be?

I keep having this reoccurring dream. The context of the dream is always the same—I’m set to travel by plane—but the storyline varies after that. Sometimes I don’t leave enough time to pack and I miss my flight. Sometimes I manage to pack in time, but then external forces—traffic, other passengers—prevent me from boarding. Sometimes I make it on the flight, but the whole plane goes down enroute. Google, in all its vague wisdom, tells me that such dreams signal a need for change in my life. In reality, I think I’m just trying to find a way to everyone I love.

At the beginning of the summer, before our familial axis shifted, Mimi and Lilly came to visit for our third annual sister trip. They’re seven and ten years younger than me and it wasn’t until a few years ago that we all started to become true friends. But now they’re their own people, so funny and wise and beautiful and I’m so proud of them my heart aches. During their visit we found cheap bikes and cruised all around the city; we strolled museums and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the park and solved crossword puzzles to our hearts’ content. We went to the mountains and estate sales and IKEA and vintage stores with painfully cool employees and Mimi and I got our noses pierced; morning and night we both leaned over the bathroom sink, our noses dunked in salty water. It was all so perfect—I knew that as it was happening, and yet my efforts to make time stand still proved futile.

Eventually, inevitably, our time came to an end. On the drive to the airport we distracted ourselves until we couldn’t anymore and then we clung to each other and cried. Somehow I mustered the strength to send them through those awful sliding glass doors. I felt my heart walk through with them. I’m not sure why things happen the way that they do. Life now is so different than the girls and I could’ve ever imagined ten, five, even two years ago. With bonds so close it’s a bit absurd how far-flung our lives are. We do our best to revel in each other’s daily happenings but things still slip through the cracks. Maybe one day we’ll be neighbors, but until then I’ll be plagued by planes. Love hurts and all that.

The other day I lay beneath the oak tree and watched its leaves swirl through the air. How little time I devote to simply being still. I can’t keep track of all the things I’m supposed to be; better to be like the tall grasses by the creek: steady, calm, accepting of the winds. Together they move as one silken mass, a colony that guards the tender grasshoppers and gophers and field mice. Swaying but not yielding—are they content with where they’re sewn? They are rooted; they don’t try to run. Who is their teacher? Who is mine, for that matter?