We're officially in year 2025. It will take some time until that feels right or normal. Some time until we don't slow down as we date our checks. Some time until we feel rooted in the new year with our plans and purpose on course.
I'm starting this post in the American Airlines Admirals Club in Dallas Ft. Worth, a fitting place of limbo to consider beginnings, as well as endings. While the 3 leg journey to and from Jackson Hole, with an overnight in one of American's hub cities, is worth the weeks we get to spend in the Tetons, the journey home tends to be more bitter than sweet. With 3 trips to the airport, a 5am for Elsa and Harry, a 9am for Hugh and a 2pm for Dave and myself, this travel day feels like bandaid being slowly pulled off of your hairy forearm. The celebration of the all- togetherness has come to an end, where Dave's foot rubs in front of the fire, playing Wavelength at the dinner table, late lunch on the couch as we watch the finale of The Great British Baking Show, gory Xbox games being played as I puzzle, waiting in line to get one of the first morning trams, meeting up with the kids at Sublette after they lap us on the slopes and apres in the hot tub made magical as steam rises and snow falls submits to the inevitable ache that comes with the disbanding. From bliss to amiss in a day.
I know the grief is worth it, but the first few days of separation feel rotten and angsty. Where Dave is able to let his tears fall as he looks through the photos of the trip during our last lunch in Mountain Standard Time, I tend to contract and feel the need to isolate. I hear every cough, every crying baby, every caw of the giant iridescent black winged ravens that flock in the town square. My insides are both brittle and bloated (the head cold doesn't help). I want to curl up in my bed and sleep for 10 hours or run 10 miles to my kids' playlists. This forlorn space is reminiscent of an international airport terminal where departures and arrivals are separated by a thin pane of glass. You stand on one side of the glass going your way as your children are on the other side going theirs. You feel as though you're one of those Gumby dolls spreading its arms and legs in opposite directions to find something to hold time still because your internal organs want to stay with your herd, match their heartbeats, graze a little longer, but the propulsion of life has other plans.
I hate this phase of re-entry, this return to life with what feels like a pail with a hole in it. Yes, there are parts that feel good; getting back to projects put on hold, having schedules and routines that feed my need for community and curiosity, loving on the dogs that I missed. But even when I land at Cyril E. King and melt in gratitude as I breathe in the humid air, regard the verdant green covered hills and silky turquoise waters, hear the rolling waves and coqui frogs out our window, there's that feeling of a phantom limb I've talked about before. The pain and awareness that something is missing and isn't ever going to return as it was.
I may sound like a drama queen, or a hormonal mother in peri-menopause, but the hole in the pail is real. The sands falling through the hourglass is happening. The web of my family is stretching and, thank goodness, holding. This wayward grief both digs in and is manageable as I've learned to cocoon, exercise regularly and plan dates with friends a few days out while I get my bearings as a repeat empty nester. I know there are a few days ahead of me to feel the shite of missing my chicks before I can course correct and return to myself. Dave has learned my cycles, he knows I can be both a tender recluse and an unregulated biatch, and he performs his re-entry routine of taking the garbage to the dumpster, checking on the house, watering the plants and going to the office to face the pile of emails he's so good at tabling while we are on family time. This isn't our first rodeo.
But, I know it is going to be okay. I'm going to muddle through the ick of our separating nucleus and come out on the other side with faith that I will find my spark to carry me through the new year, and impending new decade. And if I'm not okay, and the fog lingers longer than I want it to, that's okay, too. I'll bear witness to my doldrums and write about it.
I'll see you on whatever side I land on, hopefully before/as 5-0 hits.
With sustaining love and appreciation for you, dear reader,
St. Sunshine
I think you're the tops .