shadow of the object

We’re back in that same office, Scott and I. Same therapist sitting across the same floral rug, same issues holding the space between us. It’s different this time, me looking to him with no words, nowhere to begin. A year ago so much to say, me at the helm and clarity steering.

She sits in the overstuffed brown leather seeing all the way through me. I squirm against the arm of a small couch, leaning hard away from Scott. Am I here to reconcile or to, finally, clip those last remaining threads?


****

I stand in the bathroom watching street lights make shadows on the sidewalk; see the morning paper hit the doorstep across the street. God, what time is it anyway? There’s a rush of traffic off in the distance but I hear big wind blowing through Black Butte Ranch (Thanks, Tracy). Past that a hollow train whistle far off to the north and coming closer. 4:07 a.m. Seen the whole night through too much these last few weeks.

Oh, how I love the middle of the night quiet, house lights out, whole world sleeping. So I take down the screen to rest my elbows on the ledge. Stick my head, neck, shoulders out the window and light a cigarette, seen to many cigarettes the whole way through lately, too.

Why is it eminent to solve all of life’s problems at 4 a.m? Everything lost and pushed down in the bustle of the day comes rushing in with nothing to deflect it. Middle of the night panic. Debt collectors and wasted time, dead end jobs and narrowed vision.

And my girls are going on vacation, their first real vacation, down the coast and through the Redwoods. Camping on the beach without me. Not even eight years between them and they have a life I beyond me. Friends, relationships to neighborhoods I barely know. Store keepers and librarians who call them by name. People I’ve never met.

This restless madruga.

***

We fill dead air talking jobs and cars and about the trip until she says: “Ok, so what are we not talking about today.”

She’s older looking this summer, graying at the hairline.

I hold my silence; think “I didn’t call this meeting.”

She says: “Why do you want to rebuild this?”

I look over Scott’s head reading titles on the shelf until my eyes catch on “The Shadow of the Object.” White letters down the black spine. We never touch sitting on the couch.

“Holly?”

I want family vacations with my kids. The three-month road trips talked about when I was pregnant with Amelia. We’d go down the coast and through the desert, cross the Rio Grande, Rio Bravo on the other side. Maybe settle down in Yucatan. I want one parent in the kitchen while the other helps with homework. Maybe coach their soccer teams together. I want to give back the agony of Thursday afternoon goodbyes. I want to see Amelia’s wonder when she walks upright through the tunnel of a fallen redwood. I don’t ever want to share my girls with another woman. EVER. But I don’t know a thing about growing old together.

I say: “Maybe it could work. There’s so much I don’t trust, so much that I can’t lose again. But maybe it could be different.”