Simon left for Canada today on business, so I am on my own with the kids for a week. This is inconvenient, but also oddly soothing. I have to be good and go to bed soon, though. I CANNOT give in to the urge to sit up half the night reading, like I did when he was in Houston. The Namesake is pretty addictive, though.
I don't even feel afraid here at night any more. I did for quite a while, but I'm over it. I still lock the bathroom door when I shower and I don't go down in the basement, with all of its creepy noises, but otherwise, I'm good. Relatively.
Up at the old place, it was scarier. We lived for eleven years in a cabin up on Guardsman's Pass in Big Cottonwood Canyon, far away from the convenient, suburban purgatory in which I now reside. Up at the old place, there were no people, no lights, no noise, no road. I would get spooked when Simon was gone, but then I would think, "Who the hell do you think can find you out here? And why would anyone come all the way up here just to make you scream?" I got used to the coyotes and the way the snow would scour the windows and the sounds the wood would make when it was settling in the stove.
Occasionally, people would appear. The dude in the tuxedo standing in the light from my window late at night in a snowstorm. He was a liiiiittle off course in his search for the post-prom he was looking for... Another time, when I was standing at the kitchen sink late at night, my bottle-bottom glasses sliding down my nose and a towel turban around my head, a face suddenly appeared in the window, causing me to scream my ASS off. "Uh, sorry, ma'am. I was just looking for the party. Do you know where the party is?" Do I LOOK like I know where the fucking party is?!?
I am a little homesick for the old place. I know this is crazy. It snowed three feet up there in the last 24 hours. The canyon road has been closed for avalanche blasting. We would have been stranded without electricity; the kids would have been unable to get to school; I would have missed work; we would have been shoveling the house and the cars out for hours on end. I would have been hauling groceries to the house on my sled, in snow up to my crotch. I have a driveway now, and a garage door. With a garage door opener. But I miss the old place.
2 comments:
Try watching the movie base d on The Namesake
I can relate to missing the old place. Sometimes I think about my Alta days, and even with all the issues (and because of some of them), I miss it. But the summer was way too short up there. Remember that when you're eating fresh green beans from your garden. :-)
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