15: August 15, 2023

Nine years

Everything fits into the small, gray car, the one she bought new and in a hurry, the one she fell in love with because it represented something: ability, adventure. Independence, like her very first car, or like the first time she walked to her best friend’s house alone, or like her first bike, back then on a cul-de-sac in Texas, the heat so strong that it felt as though the pavement itself might melt. Everything fits because nothing matters, this new life that she’s creating as she goes along, figuring it will be a whim that passes, figuring she will be back on the highways in the reverse direction in a matter of months. But, no. There will be months and she will not turn around, she will not go back, and they will fill with new people, new habits, new places. There will be months and they will fill with old love and travel she’s longed for, and weather she adores, and redwoods, oh redwoods, which have always made her swoon. Wine, brunch, hiking, rainstorms. Months with words on pages and pages of journals, months with purchases filling her home: books first, then candles and chairs and bedlinens and dishes. So much more than when she came. And it all, it all continues: wedding, writing, Hawaii and France. Meetings, work, puppies, clothes. Haircuts, traditions, holidays; holidays. Groceries, laughter, tears and confusion, an election gone haywire that breaks her heart, a marriage that ends when the world stops, masks masks masks. Pregnancy, again independence like that first car, and a new love, and a baby, and trust falling by the wayside and life exploding with joy, expanding with what it can be, what it might be, what it is, what it is, what it so finally, finally is. Lovers into friends; friends into lovers. Moon rise, sun fall, the divine pleasure of a ripe peach, a child’s hand so soft and full. This is what it means to live, to gain weight and presence and perspective and gratitude. She carries, now, so much more than what would fit in that small, gray car, the one that got her here, where everything was meant to begin. Where everything, everything, begins.