(Sorry. Not sorry, actually.)
This morning sees rainclouds over the water, a Foy Vance slow-dance to Fifteen through the kitchen while making breakfast together, nose to nose. Coffee on the patio, braving the uncovered stone area, ready to run at a moment's notice but for now enjoying the cool salt air, the cloying early spring pollen and the heavy dimness that surrounds us on the cliff, in the trees.
He is home, not this place, further to my thoughts from the other day. His crazy-long red hair, clipped words and devastating integrity always left me wishing I was cooler, older, more sure of myself and less inclined to fight him at every turn. This man who made me do math worksheets while sitting at a sticky picnic table under an awning, out of the sun in the bug-heat of August in the middle of a midway so that I would be smarter when I went into grade 6, because grade 6 was harder math than grade 5, from his recollection and that way if I did well in school I could continue to spend summers with him. Who taught me how to tie bows backwards on my shoes so they would lie flatter and not stick up, who braided my hair for me every single morning and then wrapped the braid around my head two or three times so that I looked like a Swiss milkmaid in just about every summer photo ever taken because he was terrified I would get my very long hair trapped in the machinery or caught in a door or pulled somehow but at the same time he loved it so and wouldn't hear of the suggestion to cut it even though I didn't care one way or another.
Get a room. Jesus. PJ mock-complains as he comes in and finds us trying to clean up from breakfast but mostly kissing instead.
Did that, Lochlan mutters in return.
Too bad you're not in it right now, PJ continues.
And how, Lochlan agrees and then laughs out loud. It's a good day, oddly. A better day with more sleep, more perspective, and a corner turned, somewhat abruptly, to a whole new stage in life.