If you blinked late last night, Daniel showed up on my doorstep and he was back at the airport before it started to get dark, just a little while ago. He came to give me a hug, my variation of it, anyway, and then he was gone again, a victim of Caleb's easily enforceable timetable. He who has plane makes rules, a lesson I tested early this morning when I tried to go over his head and get Ben a flight home for Friday and couldn't because everything is booked and Ben has a schedule besides.
And right this second I'm walking the tightrope between horrifically discouraged and somewhat heartened. Things are slowly falling into place. Time heralds the adventure on the horizon, blah, blah, blah. It's going to happen whether I sleepwalk or fret the whole way through it. I'm trying for small victories and mindful of big challenges. I'm trying to stick the methods I have always used. A lot of tears and one step in front of the other and verbal smorgasbords of words designed to convey to others precisely how poorly I deal with stress and only serving to reduce me to idiot in their eyes, I'm sure.
For one very brief cool-skinned hug nothing was so bad.
Then he let go and I slid back down, all the way to the bottom and landed with a hard thump and got grass stains all over my starched pinafore and insult to my injuries besides.
I choose sleepwalk, but I'm not allowed.
I would pick Ben to come back, but that seems unreachable, invisible, out of the question, fragile miss Bridget.
The cold and the quiet settle in again like a blanket that seems warm until you realize you can no longer breathe or move or find any peace at all. That's where I am tonight anyways.
