I’m back in Canada now, where I live permanently (until we fall into riches and can become snowbirds, that is). I spent Friday evening flying from Phoenix to Canada, but moments before my dear friend took me to Sky Harbor, I sat at my sister’s kitchen table noshing on a Shredded Beef and Cheese from Burrito Express™. I took a look around the place and I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness to be leaving.
I looked at my sweet-faced nephew, who still doesn’t know my name, who will probably be potty trained the next time I see him, who won’t be best friends with his cousins—my unborn children—because he won’t live just down the street from them…he’ll live a country away. I got kind of choked up, but I held myself together until I got to the check-in counter at the airport, and then I sort of lost it. If only I didn’t love everyone so much—well, let me rephrase that: I don’t love everyone in the world—I don’t even love many people. But the ones I do love, I love dearly…deeply…so much it’s almost cliché.
As the plane zoomed further and further away from my hometown, I couldn’t quite name the feeling in my self…was it homesickness? Loneliness? Sorrow? Or excited? Giddy to see Poor Kyle, who had been back in his country for several weeks? I finally decided it was all and none of those things, and that all this thinking about feelings was bad for my soul…so I got over it (but not really; I’m never really over it).
The bad news is that before I left Mesa, I was only able to take pictures of the project at it’s 95% complete state—I had to leave my poor sister to finish the rest. That’s bad for two reasons: 1) My sister is already stressed out by nature, and probably hates me for leaving her with a bunch of little tasks to wrap up all by her lonesome, and 2) I don’t have fully polished pictures to show of the completed project. Maybe tomorrow?
The good news is that I got fresh-from-the-tree, home grown lilacs today. For free.
My free range lilacs, pre-pruning. (Also, for one day in my life, I was glad the previous owners of our house got purple paint for cheap and slapped it on every wall in sight—it matched my lilacs!)
I cut down some of the greenery and switched out the vases (probably to my mother-in-law’s disgust), and like them even more. Tomorrow I might go crazy and cut out all the green—what do you think, should I do it?
My mother-in-law and I picked them from her next-door-neighbors’ yard (with their permission). I brought mine home, picked out leaves, and let them fall into the vase where they landed, just like Cecilia Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement did with her wildflowers and the fancy vase. It was very liberating; I felt so organic, like a hippie but in this decade. My house has been smelling like heaven all day.
It’s sad to be away from home, but it’s good to be home. How weird is that?
Anyone else having some unsettling funk hovering over them this week? How about the fact that it’s already the month of June? Weird.
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