Leap Day

Back in the Ann Arbor days, the early 80s, when I was doing a lot more writing, I composed another front stoop poem, on a strangely warm, sunny day at the end of February. The house on Bath Street was perched next to a woody ravine on a dead end street, surrounded by bungalows with rampant herb gardens. Purple sage can survive a cold Michigan winter, shrinking under the snow and waiting for spring. I sat on the listing plank steps with my face to the sun, and waited for the clear sign of what to chose next for my life; go to Florida and a new life, or stay here and find another job. Re-reading the poem, I knew I had already made up my mind, I was going to go, and I'd never sit in the warm sunshine in late February on these steps again.

Waves of that day came back to me this morning, walking downtown and seeing clumps of drowsy purple sage next to gray lavender and blooming rosemary in a large planter. What was a complete anomaly in Michigan, is a normal winter's day here, and I much prefer it this way. I can sit on my stony concrete steps with my face in the sun in late February in this place, on these steps, and it all comes washing back. That I am finally back in school, dealing with the Biggest Incomplete of my entire life, but outwardly doing much of what I was doing back then in Ann Arbor, is kinda funny. Almost like the last 22 years didn't happen. More and more, it even feels that way.

To some, this may look like Being Stuck. As in, "Ma'am, it's done already, move on, get over it, drop the baggage!"

And I reply, "That's what I tried to do those 22 years." I did the Job Thing, the 'My Beautiful Career' Thing, the 'Serious Adult Relationship' Thing, the Survival Strategy Thing, and even the Not-Caring Thing. Years and years spent in the wilderness. One or two major choices I may have done differently, looking back, but if presented with the same circumstances, my path would probably look much the same. I mean, living in a condo on Highland Beach, Atlantic Coast South Florida for free for eight months at 24 years old---who is going to say, "Uh, no thanks, really, I much prefer my unheated room in a run-down house with flaky roommates in a Michigan winter, a chronic respiratory illness and being unemployed,"?

Today was the first time since that last day at the B-store that I walked past my old workplace downtown. It felt weird. Past the bank where I spent so much time each weekday afternoon waiting to make a bag of deposits, past the parked FedEx truck of my old driver, with a ticket on it (as usual). Past the mall, past the Russian 'kofe' place, smelling the Mexican lunch place; how many hundreds of times did I make that walk, but veer left to the wall of glass doors? Today, I was smiling and just kept walking past, towards the river, towards home in the middle of the workday with my class notes in my book bag. No big deal, I know, but for a fraction of a second I was time traveling, 22 years, then 13 months, but also into the near-future. Because Portland is the place to navigate from, for me, and no condo in a warm place could change my mind. PSU has no clue what mad power it has to change the stream of Deep Time.

Jasmine Tree Girl

Oh, the sudden surprise, to see that name in my inbox this afternoon...

Jasmine Tree Girl sent out an exploratory jingle, anyone still out there? Hope you're well, want to sip tea and talk?

Funny, I was thinking of her yesterday afternoon while washing dishes. A picture of her with very short hair is in a funky sage green frame on the wall above the sink, with a splendid blue Hindu god in the frame next to her, and I mused about how it had never occurred to me to take the picture down, not ever. I hoped she was doing well, and thought how happy she'd have been to know I was going back to school. Lala la la la, back to the Mrs. Meyers and sponge.

I didn't really hesitate to reply, but I did marvel a bit and wonder what would happen next. How will it be now, is this a touchpoint only? Or a new era of our friendship? Will we just start again from here, or go over what happened two years ago?

What taking a two year break has done for me, is to have undergone what always was my greatest fear about her, losing her, and I survived quite well. I lived through losing her, and all the part of my life that we had shared for 25 years being lost, and I'd consciously changed some perspectives I'd had for so long. There were major life transitions for me that I had walked and cried through without her, and I'd still been able to keep going, without her understanding and emotional support. I hadn't regretted what made the break happen, but I did miss her less and less than I was always afraid I would. She was the sister I had never had, and I lost that sister, and it broke my heart. But I managed to keep going, and that is good, a realization I may never had been able to make without this separation. So---that is good, too.

The daydreams we both had, about what living in Portland at the same time would be like, never really became real, and I wish it could have happened. It was a beautiful life, and real enough to me living miserably in Boca Raton to propel me out here with my cat, books and music. I thought about the best days when we were housemates in Ann Arbor, when we first met, living in the funky sage green bungalow on the cul-de-sac called Bath St., doors and windows open wide all summer, communal living and herb gardens. I brought that all with me out here, intact like a relic in amber, thinking it would all just come back to life. She was not such a preservationist, and doesn't remember those bungalow days with as much fondness as I do, and is usually much better at working from where she is now. The daydream fell apart.

We always complimented each other well, her Aquarius to my Cancer, but I had a lucid moment once listening to her, when I realized she had matured so much more than I'd noticed, she'd become a real 'grown-up', which I resist more and more as I get older. When we met, I was more mature than I think I am now, and she was whimsical and romantic---now we've flipped sides somehow, she's gotten really good at maneuvering in the grown-up world, and I want to get back to simple as much as possible.

What is next? Tea, a chat, weird silences? A long hug, tears, babbling brooks for hours?
Stay tuned.