Grr.

The seventy hour headache is finally waning and I'm due to get a whopping five hours of sleep tonight thanks to an airport run tonight followed by early errands tomorrow.

Great. That should help in spades.

And as it turns out my skin is hypersensitive to chlorine and I have to limit my swim time and shower immediately upon leaving the water. I'm just going to start spiking my OJ with hydrocortisone cream and see how that goes instead. The only thing I'm not allergic to? The redhead, I think.

Life could be worse, right?

Sure it could. I could be Caleb, who volleyed for yet another night and failed to secure one and is now pacing his warpath, plotting our ruin and being a real jerk, frankly.

Magical creatures.

I found the perfect pair of overalls today. A mid-faded blue denim, bib pocket, carpenter style with legs I can roll up a bit so that they look cute with a pink ballerina top and pink glitter flip flops. I put my hair in the tiniest ponytail but it was half out within the hour. 

Lochlan sees me and says What the hel- and then breaks into a huge grin. You look fourteen again. 

I know. I tell him with despair. Until you reach my actual face. 

Bridget, I don't know what you're talking about. He's blind to the dark circles, the furrowed pain-brow that speaks of a sixty-five hour migraine that has had around ten or twelve hours of sleep within it, not enough to conquer it by far. Blind to the fact that I gave up on all of my pain meds already, pretending it doesn't bother me one minute while the next finds me gritting my teeth just trying to brush them. I rip out the ponytail and put the tie back on my wrist. 

Ow. 

That ratchets you down to twelve. He smiles again. My bangs are in my eyes and the rest is wild waves. You okay?

Still have a headache. 

Want me to call the doctor?

He's not a doctor. 

I'll bite. Want to go to the other doctor? Clinic? ER? 

Maybe all three. 

He stirs to get up. No, stay put. I'm just thinking about it.

Bridget-

It's fine. I just have to sleep. 

So sleep. 

I hate sleeping. I might miss something. 

Now you're ten. 

Why? 

Because that's what you always used to say. Remember I said it's like you think every night is Christmas Eve and you think you might see Santa if you stay up long enough but I told you he only shows up on one of those over three hundred nights in a year so you may as well close your eyes. 

I remember. 

So close your eyes, Peanut. Sleep away the pain. 

I'm trying. 

Your eyes are still open. 

This is a long habit to break, Locket. 

Well, it's either sleep now or after you see Santa in about six and a half months. But you'll be a raving lunatic by then. 

And I'm not now?

Half loon, half circus child. I'll take it, either way. I feel like that top is a leotard (because in the nineties all ballerina tops were bodysuits. God I'm old) and if you take the overalls off you'll be ready for the swings. 

Well it isn't and I don't have any underwear on so if I take off my overalls I'll put on a show alright.

Cease & quiet.

I need some room to breath
You can stay asleep if you wanted to
They say that's nothings free
You can run with me if you wanted to
Yeah you can run with me if you wanted to

There's nothing better than waking up to hear the first Foo Fighters song I've liked in a decade. It's called Run and it's really good. Not since The Pretender in 2007 has one of their songs hooked me from the first chorus like that.

***

Sam is a song I can't hear, playing softly on the radio on the kitchen counter by the open window where a warm midmorning summer breeze lifts the curtains just enough to let the memory thief slip between them, straight back into my head.

What about the letters, Bridget?

He's codependent, enabling, needing me to need him and today I don't need anyone.

You read them. 

I have. 

Great. You can do me a book report. Like in grade five when I did one on The Great Brain and by the end I realized it was a book about Lochlan. 

That's funny but that's changing the subject. 

You're fucking gaslighting me, Sam. 

August has you in a good spot, then. Sam concedes, backing off as I think about precisely the spot August had me in last time I saw him, wedged up against the door under his hands, my head pressed against the night latch. I think I have a dent in my temple from it, truth be told, and I reach up to rub it while Sam remains oblivious.

I'll keep them for you. Someday you may change your mind. I'm just trying to keep your best interests at heart. 

God. He fits in here so nicely. So well, as they all get along like brothers, barely breaking the mold of their teenage years which came to mean passing me around like a bottle of forbidden alcohol, risking a sip here, a swallow there, hiding me away, bringing me out to fight over, angry young drunks with a bone to pick, when mine were clean and so easily plucked, bent like bows to shoot arrows through all of them until I had a stack of hearts a mile long, my arrow so weighed down it headed in the wrong direction, taking me so long to get back here I arrive bitter, tired and suspicious, resentful as hell.

(I didn't mean to write all that today but there it is.)

I reach out and turn the radio off and close the window and the silence that echoes back to me is deafening.

If it's going to be limited edition I'm going to have to make my own after this.

We found them!! BEST. THING. EVER. (Ignore the blurry photo. It's actually a stellar iphone7 portrait mode photo but Blogger has to quash it beyond belief and the same guy who enables my candy issues won't tell me how to make it better.)

If I could breed I'd show you all my infantile obsessions
If I could sleep I'd hold you in my head
If I was strong I'd keep you close and render you defenseless
If I was gone I'd hope you'd take my place

I know what he's going to say before he says it. I know him like I know my own face in a mirror.

Neamhchiontach. Leave things alone. Later on it will just add more heartache when you have to go through all these hoops to change it back.

I won't be changing it back. This is it. This is my final form. 

He laughs. If I were to bet money on that, I'd wager you'll have a name you'd had before. 

You're bringing Jacob back. 

Not his. And no. Stop it. I can't. Even if I could I wouldn't. 

Because you don't want me to be happy. 

What I WANT is for you to be mine. My name looked good on you. 

Don't make things complicated. 

It made things easy, actually. How many doors opened for you with my name? How easy was it to pretend? It can be real. 

The age of monsters is over, sorry. 

You going to talk like him all afternoon?

Will it make you stop? If so, then, yes. Sure.

What is it the age of now? Destitute carnies? 

Hell yes it is. 

A very long and roundabout way to get to the name I used to write out in my notebook over and over again, trying it on for size.

So.

So? 

Lochlan is filthy, finishing detailing the engine on the latest and greatest. The minute he said he was selling the camper, he had a buyer. They say I'll buy it, just tell me how much and he smiles to himself as if he can't believe what he thinks is his good fortune instead of his skill at restoring these things. 

He grins. You going to change your name? 

Yeah. I figured I should match the kids. I laugh when his face falls.

It's a bad joke but he realizes it right away and he yells JESUS CHRIST. HAHAHAHA. That actually didn't cross my mind. Wait. Is that what you're doing? 

(The kids share a last name with Caleb and Cole. Because they were brothers. Because Cole was their father until it was discovered that he wasn't but that's okay, he wasn't alive to find that out and I didn't want to take their memories of him as their father away.)

No. I figured I need to belong to the living. I deserve it. 

Come here, Mrs. M.

I get a hug and now I'm filthy too. 

Death of the party.

Too hot. Can't post. Spent all day in the pool. Have a rash from the sunscreen, a rash from the sun itself and a rash from the chlorine. Have a rash from Caleb's stubble. Have a rash from the Strawberry slushy. Have a rash from heat. Too hot. Can't post. Too tired. Going to take my rashy self down to sleep in the hanging chair naked with no blankets because it's cool down here in the studio and I can just curl up like a cat and have Ben for company. It's only 7:15 pm. Figures.

Marching on.

Gregg Allman is this morning's heartbreak, dead at 69. This is why I don't Internet, folks, and as much as the boys tried to shield me I was told and this sucks, when your favorites die. It fucking sucks. Not as much as people you touch every day but they touch you in a different way, through music and it's still hard and I wish I could hit pause on the whole world sometimes because as I always say, it's fucking fleeting.

The Allman Brothers are a perfect soundtrack to an outdoor dinner, a perfect relaxing blissful break from whatever stresses you have when you just want to relax and not worry. Go see, if you don't already know. Go listen. Listen to Brothers and Sisters album and tell me you don't agree.

(Or search here. There are at LEAST eleven mentions on SWP.)

If there's going to be a void in my universe every ten days I swear I'm just going to disappear so I never find out, so I can't be sad, so I just won't have to feel like all of this is eventually for nothing. Sometimes it seems as if we were put here to swing wildly between euphoria and despair and it seems perfectly rewarding and unbelievably cruel at the same time.

And yet on we go.

(Jacob would say Onward and upward. I'm changing it a little. I'll be changing my last name soon too. It's time.)

Adams family.

My hands are rough,
My fingers cold,
And your heart's so young and so naive,
To ever feel,
For a moment that I might dare to believe

Today I get the pleasure of my favorite beach towel coming back to me, having spent the past five months in the linen closet next door because Daniel put things away and it looked like a regular turquoise towel when it's folded.

When you unfold it, it's a mermaid wearing a narwhal mask. It's so obviously mine. So out to lunch and raucous and pretty too. Vivid greens, purples and turquoise make up the main colors. Ben brought it back for me from Rhode Island and it was instantly the only towel I would ever use again when at the beach or pool.

It went missing last winter and I resolved to go find a copy at all costs. Ben said we could go any time. But I don't lose things. Well, I lose my heart. My soul. My...mind. Stuff, then. I don't lose stuff.

And I'm right because it came back to me.

Daniel said he was going to put it on the shelf in the pool shed and I would wonder how it came back but Schuyler told him to bring it over right away instead so he did and I'm glad. I threw my arms around Daniel and thanked him and Ben walked in just then.

Oh, I see how it is. 

Daniel laughs and said he found the towel.

Ben points out Towel Day was yesterday and Daniel nods, happy he remembered when he's perpetually preoccupied.

I love watching them together and want more of it so I jump back in.  Swim tonight? You bring the house, I'll bring the house and all the outbuildings?

Deal. Daniel gives Ben a quick hug and heads off. Ben wraps the towel around me and then picks it up by both ends like a hammock only I'm in the middle.

Weeeeee, I laugh. It's a swing! 

It could be. But you've touched my little brother and now you must be cleansed in fire, Ben says with a thick accent.

Gotcha covered, Lochlan says and he walks in, not at all surprised at the sight in front of him. I know a guy. He winks.

Found my towel! 

Awesome. You want to leave it inside so it doesn't get burned? 

What? 

You heard the man.

Teenage wasteland.

Henry wanted a cup of coffee with his breakfast so I made him one and now I'm flying sheets for sails, ready to do whatever needs to be done because caffeine is my cocaine, apparently.

He took one sip, made a face in spite of the generous amounts of milk and sugar I included, and handed it back, telling me I should save it, I can have it later.

Ah, my son. Six-foot-one, an almost-sixteen year old trapped between childhood lemonade and overly-strong coffee like a caged animal suddenly faced with being free. Sometimes with him I feel like half-parent, half lion-tamer which makes perfect sense if you knew Jake. Those similarities I won't allow myself to see anymore, as Henry is his own person, not the image of anyone else. He will grow into his own skin eventually.

I hope I grow into mine somewhere around that time too.