Sunday, March 24, 2013

Missing

Time is drawing short. There are only a couple of days left before I leave this house, with no reason ever to come back. I would rather not do it. No, that's not right; I would rather do it under different circumstances, but it's not a choice I get to make.

I loved this house when we bought it less than three years ago. We saw it in August when the sun was high and warm, when raspberries were weighing down the canes in the garden, and the apple trees were promising a bounty. The mountains were out, the water was sparkling, and it seemed like just the place we'd hoped to find. Real estate prices were down and suddenly we could afford waterfront. How could it be any better than this, a dream we never thought we'd see realized.


Then, not long ago, I remembered times when I was out in someone's boat, looking with envy and longing at the beautiful houses at the water's edge, thinking how lucky the people were who lived in them. What great lives they had, how happy they must be, living in places like these. But of course, you never, ever know. You honest to God don't know what goes on behind closed doors. There are no guarantees that come with any possession that your life will be bliss or even averagely happy.


But there's no amount of money that can buy this bliss: An eagle gliding by, right at the edge of the bank that drops off to the canal. The sound of coyotes outside the bedroom window at night. A full moon shining in the skylight or gleaming over the water. Chickadees, nuthatches, brilliantly blue steller's jays, and goldfinches swarming the feeders. Sun slanting low and golden across the yard. Hummingbirds fighting with aerobatics. Bushels of apples and buckets of raspberries, warm from the sun and fragrant with summer. Clouds creating an ever-changing peep show over the Olympics. A doe picking her delicate way through the apple trees. A deep inhale of the fragrance of newly-cut grass, made sweeter because I didn't have to do the cutting. Fishing boats crowding the water during salmon runs. Submarines heading out to sea and returning home.


And then there's the canal. I don't have words to describe how much I love the water that constantly, constantly changes, with warring currents, patches inexplicably smooth as glass, the ebb and flow of the tides. Choppy waves capped with white when the wind kicks up. The sparkle, the shimmer, the blue and the gray and the silver that grace its every surface every second of every day, ever changing yet ever constant.

I'm not even gone yet and I'm missing it, every bit of it, already.


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Thought for the day:
She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago...[She] realized those parts had left her and were never coming back. (Ann Brashares (Sisterhood Everlasting))