We’re three weeks out from putting this Big Top Circus on the road, and I’ve been completely hands off of the operation over the past few days while I worked on some very meaningful farewells to dear family in MD and PA. (Well, I ordered our new composting toilet on-line, if that counts.)
The reality sunk in just before my trip early last week when we were given a hard date for the yurt delivery, which forced us to size up our to-do list. At the same time, I couldn’t stop my attentions from being pulled to the melancholy occasion of celebrating family ties and saying goodbye to loved ones. My mind and heart are torn between the industry of realizing technicolor sunsets over high mountain desert vistas, and the languish of making and preserving tender memories amid trilling birds and lush rolling green hills. I’m neither here nor there… The faces that resemble mine show themselves and stir up all sorts of retired pains and unrealized joys, yet the people who I long for most are out of arms reach. I’m oh-so tired of being stretched between what was and what will be, but there is no rest in sight.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Everything we intend to take with us from the first-round sort lies in wait inside the former movie room with blackout curtains. (How nice it would be right now to curl up in the dark with a mind-numbing Netflix binge!) All the bookshelves and original artwork still in tact, not yet ready to face displacement. Our home of 15 years becoming more of a hollow shell, while the prospect of groundbreaking on the remote hillside tugs at us and creates a sense of immediacy among the feelings of longing for days gone by. Prospective house flippers stop by to evaluate the bones of the 1958 structure that originally housed a rocket scientist and his wife- Suddenly I am again protective of what I am trying to tear loose.
Many pending farewells with well-wishing friends are strategically scheduled as electronic appointments and promise warm reminiscence. The light in the grey of the turning times… I can’t help but hear the clock ticking.
