Post #38: In the Mood for an Interlude

Setting aside Brazil for a moment, I am brooding about other people, places, and times today. In this seventh week in country, the thoughts close to my heart today are far, far away. It's peculiar how this lifestyle is one that supersedes arbitrary boundaries, even if entirely by necessity. Since graduating from high school, I have explored many parameters, moving first from Sioux Falls to New York City and the continuing to Stará Turá to Guadalajara to Monterey to Craiova to Brașov to Tartu to Arlington to Tartu to Astana to Jakarta to Arlington to Brasília. My intention is not to boast but rather to share how my sense of place overwhelms.  This attention to naming is somehow coupled with a lack of attachment to their definition - in my mind one runs right into another. It doesn't matter that I am in Brasilia because I feel that pieces of me are everywhere, attached to each and every one of you and the different trails I've traipsed. The biggest piece of me is connected to my sense of home place and family. That core piece has been quivering as some of the boundary lines that have not changed over time are imminently and irreversibly being altered.

The one constant in the list of places above is the square red house I returned to, the living room in which I played cribbage with my father, the petunias I planted with my mother, the countless cups of coffee drunk with those stopping by to visit, the bedroom where my best friend and I played school, store, and barbies, the rooftop on which my red tabby cat Tigger meowed each morning until I got up to let him in, the split level steps at the bottom of which my first dog laid to greet with thumping tail for visitors, the driveway in which we held a block party and rehearsal dinner for my wedding, the backyard which I and my brother mowed a few thousand times, the yard which served us for snowforts in blizzards, improvised imaginary zoos and acrobatic stages, and hastily constructed daredevil bike tricks... There is so much connected to that spot of earth - I could literally go on and on and on. 

My childhood home in Wyoming

My experience is not unusual as I suppose all adults eventually have to say farewell to a childhood home for various reasons and become less tethered to their youth. What strange luck for a self-professed world wanderer and vagabond to have grown up in one place for so long and to have remained connected to the same steps and walls and bright marigolds year after year. The house is just a place - the people are the ones that make it special. And yet, when this property belongs to someone else, I will feel a bit of a hole. I feel it already, knowing that it is empty of junk drawers and the pictures that hung on the walls. All to say that I am feeling surprisingly sentimental while grappling with this loss of space.

At the same time, I am preoccupied with one of my favorite aunts (actually, I would probably say that she was my childhood favorite, but it is plausible that another aunt might read this, so I'll hedge a tiny bit). My Aunt Gus is only ten years older than I am, and, when I was a child, she was still at home with my grandparents. This was incredibly awesome - our aunt was young and funny. We got to spend more time with her making cookies, doing chores, and watching her cheer leading. I loved penpals as a kid, and she was also the aunt who would answer my letters when she was in college and beyond. My aunt, the youngest of 8 kids has been attacked by insidious cancer and she is not doing very well. I can easily imagine her dry wit and the sound of her voice as she made up a song or did something goofy. I am completely flummoxed and sad about her illness. I just don't understand and I hope that she knows however far away I am, I am hugging her close to my heart.

A visit with Gussy in Seattle in 2017

And what happened to me today in the midst of brooding? An old friend called out of the blue to say hello and to listen. Sometimes those dissipating boundaries work equally in my favor.