Shouldn't…but Do

We met up in the bathroom, I knew she would be there. The Expensive Lawyer. The Neighbor, bless her heart, was there too.

Bathrooms, generally speaking, are places where spent energy naturally takes final form. An initial setting somehow appropriate for a day at court.

Bathrooms are great levelers. Basic human needs, elimination, cleanliness, fleeting vanity. Looking down, flaming pink, pale pink and maroon painted toes. Toes say a bit about a gal, you will have to guess who had which.

Few places rival bathrooms for frank disclosure, even among strangers. Kitchens compete, bedrooms cannot compare, but bathrooms – life stories spill, grief, elation in shared tension, tears wiped off, lipstick reapplied, shoulders up and out the door with a stronger smile. Relieving yourself, bathrooms are good for it.

On this day though, a meeting of three different women in a bathroom – one protecting her children, one to hold her hand, one to speak for her. Necessity, containment, expression. It works.

As it happened, this triumvirate held sway in courtroom 2B. A hungry ghost, the Confused Soul will, sooner than later, seek to digest again, and we three will meet again. More good energy flushed away, but it is, as they say, what it is.

Try this at home:  Go outside, look up, what do you see?

On my part of the planet there are cumulus clouds, a sign of fine weather.  No mixed clouds, just puffies working their way east.

Remember laying flat on your back, watching clouds?  At a distance clouds seem a stable feature, but they are more like thoughts, forever moving, shifting and changing direction in sometimes unexpected ways.  Transparent musing rising with warm air, condensing to take form.

Today they curl in like a nautilus shell, expanding, rolling at the edges.  Running into each other making new forms, more visible patterns that give a clue as to what is coming.

And high above the cloud deck, the sky is split by a westward working jet, intervention in the natural world, the fluffy foreground recedes in favor of thrust against a brilliant blue sky.  My thoughts go with it.

The northern edge of my semi-rural subdivision is bounded by trees. Mature and dense they form a greenbelt between this and the next, more upscale, neighborhood.

Their canopy supports a diverse realm of woodland to meadow birds, the leaves blaze with autumn color, the dry, naked branches tap and call in the winter wind. The sound of spring peepers around their feet is a first sign of spring. They block any other view of the northern horizon.

Horizons make for boundedness, we set ourselves by them – the area we cover – we gratefully allow them to limit expectations. Entire lives lived in a set of real, or imagined, boundaries.

But horizons are deceptively shifty. Even as I drive the highway, the horizon ever changes, even as I look up to a peerless blue sky, unbounded space frees an earthbound mind.

At once horizons are a limit, and at once, they are not. They become borders, places where something melted, suddenly or slowly, into another realm. Retaining vitality in memory, horizons can never be revisited, never the same the second time around.

Horizons, like the greenbelt in my neighborhood, are thin places. They go both ways, forward limits of imagination, receding limits of experience. Thin places to travel beyond, always seeking the next horizon.

I am getting rid of things these days. The bed is going. King-size. Old. Too old. I am kicking it to the curb this week.

That leaves me a mattress. May toss it too. Leaving me the floor, something soothingly transient about that.

Beds. Good for sleep and connection with soul or flesh, or for unrest and disconnection with same. Everyone sleeps somewhere, many genuinely believing they are awake.

It is not for memory, or for lack of it, that I dispose of the bed. It has been faithful only to me, yet I welcome its demise.

Beds. Inviting, safe harbor for some. Not for me.

At the ball field the other night, a sudden, loud whoosh was followed by squeals of delighted children.

The source of sound and squeal proved to be the township water tower, venting water forcefully from an outlet designed for such purposes.

As adults moved vehicles from a semi-flooded lot, children soaked themselves and each other with abandon.

Like the beach, children swiped and battled incoming waves, adults stepped back, warily watching the water they too, once welcomed.

Adults don’t care much for inundation, whether as water or worldly weight. Children can’t pull themselves away. I’ll take waves to a beach chair any day.

Water towers, intentionally built to increase the pressure of water in our lives.  At least they have pressure valves.

It was the only day that particular song ever got stuck in my head. Repeating over and over despite attempts at banishment. 19 years ago.

It was the theme song to “Woody Woodpecker,” and it was my wedding day.

I got married in an arboretum, botanical garden sort of place. Smallish affair, 50 or so people. Two big tents, cake was chocolate decadence, topped with irises.

Forecast was perfect, robin’s egg blue sky. Guests assembled, ready to commit and the minister whispered “shall we move the ceremony?”

From nowhere, the western sky had produced an impressive squall, lightening sweeping across the valley headed for our location. It was perfect.

Torrential mountain downpour, I wondered if the aluminum tent poles would make good lightening rods. Guests huddled and hastily, but politely, retreated as soon as socially acceptable.

Champagne and rain, I pranced atop the soaked seating in a drizzle, laughing. People thought I was nuts, still do.

Woody never bothered me again. The wedding dress and hair piece were hermetically packaged to last forever, tulle, silk and freshwater pearls sealed to resist ravages of time and emotion.

At least until last week, in the closed, stuffy garage when I poked airholes in the dress box with a dandelion digger and put both the dress and the hair piece out for the garbage – separately, of course – to avoid further unholy alliance.

Was there a more eco-friendly means of disposing of these things? Sure, it wasn’t their fault. But sometimes you just have to get rid of stuff. Give it some breathing room and send it on its way.

Today I take my children to meet with X and a family therapist for the first time, their relationship is not so good. It’s the waiting room for me.

Scanning the skies today, hot and humid. A convective storm later if we’re lucky. There was no rainbow 19 years ago, maybe there will be today.

I’m back. Crash landed last night in a bag of Lays Baked Ruffle Potato chips. Broke the fall.

Can’t wait to see what happens next.