Observations of a Southern Woman in Vt

***January 2008**
He called to me as I left the bar. “Hey, excuse me, may I ask you a question?” I was walking around… feeling about as aimless as the walk I was taking. No place to go in particular. No reason to be. Had he known then he was about to save my life I wonder what he would think? Hey… “How do you walk like that?” he called again… I looked at him, fresh… he looked at first glance to be about twelve years old. Ha, what a noob. Cute. A deeper look into his bright clear blue eyes revealed living as deep, and wise, and mature as the ocean. If only I had known then…
***October 2009***
As I drove north, it was like walking head into the wind. Pushing forward. It was not an easy task. It was counter intuitive. It was contrary. Pressing forward into a foreign country. The land flowed differently. The hills more rounded and flattened. I could smell the dirt, redolent of when I was a child in Illinois. The musty smell of the rich black dirt and the thick bowel smell of the farm animals filled my nostrils. Even the road-kill had changed. The deer much larger in size had gone from the small white tail brownish red to a gray mass, and there were other roadside misfortunes that I could not make out by shape or color. I couldn’t even recognize the road kill and what have I done I wondered. And then there was the snow, the oh-god-that-is-snow snow. The highway itself was fine. Dry as a bone. But at the highways edge – levees of grey black frozen snow and beyond in the right of ways, pristine glistening snow. And at the edge of me, barely peaking in, I could see the beauty he had described to me. This beauty did not remove my fears, but at least I could see it. I could see it. It was hope.
As I took in the sights and smells it punctuated I was not in Kansas anymore. It punctuated that my ruby red slippers (as well as my sexy little sandals) would most likely be of little use. It punctuated that my life had changed and would never be the same again. The choice to head north into the wind was difficult. Whether this choice was mine or not is of little consequence to this story. I had to do this, and that is all I can say about that. It was a to be or not be choice, and if that is your only choice … what is the choice? And I wondered how having been a place so familiar - how it could seem so unfamiliar. I felt as though the things I had weren’t mine anymore, like they were all a lie, or that I didn’t want them. I suppose I had been going away for awhile, not waiting for the actual trip.
***November 2009***
That first day, the first kiss on the sidewalk so public and so raw. He pushed me up against the wall… firmly but not harshly... he took me and pressed his mouth against mine. I responded to him. Responded to his touch and his words and the corporal-ness of him. And in him I found something I would be uncivilized for. My hand flew to my mouth and my breath stopped. His heat had sucked the oxygen out of my air. He whispered in my ear to breath. Just breath.
***December 15, 2007***
I rose like any other week day; got dressed for work, drove to work, began working. Then a tear fell, and another, and another... one after another like a faucet dripping and I remember thinking my tear ducts must be broken - this is not crying. I have no lump in my throat. My breathe is even. I could speak without faltering. I was amazed and dismayed. And it would not stop, one after the other they welled in my eyes and slipped over the edge till I wondered if I could become dehydrated from many tears. I mean, you know, it was freaking weird... you know when you are sad and upset, possibly even a little depressed... but I was thinking I have got this. I am okay, I am a strong woman and then these fucking tears start pouring from my eyes. By the end of the day, for the first time in my life, I find myself sitting in a counselors office. Explaining. Relating. Rationalizing. Justifying. Crying. Sobbing. Breaking.
***October 2007***
No parent wants that call. She was in ICU a state away. We fought about the directions, his driving, my driving, stopping for food all the way down as we rushed to her side.