1.
"It's been a few days now, how are you feeling?" is the question tapping me on a shoulder each day.
As it was two summers ago as I stepped off the Greyhound Bus delivering me home from the adventures of the road, the bittersweet intersection of root and bloom hang like a shawl around my shoulders. By arriving into the home area, but not yet my home, I slowly acclimate.
What has changed while gone? Those assimilating change over time slowly accept fate. For me, surprise bonks me on the head. Wait, what happened here? The coffee bar no longer exists in the Putney General Store? The Fireworks restaurant isn't on Main Street anymore? Details of life moving on without me sneaks up from the shadows of time.
But, from within what has remained, familiar sprouts hearty against harsh elements, offers bouquets of memory. Friends, giddily wanting the vicarious news of adventure, invite me for meals, tea, visits. I tell the tales most important to tell—not just what I did, but who I have become. Threaded through the fabric, I also walk amidst ghosts and strangers, sit at small round tables in back corners of bakeries and coffee shops, wonder just when this community will fully notice my return.
My anonymity on the road had become my refuge, my haven, my summit of perspective. Can I continue to wear that very specific awareness—remember an expanded self moving through this contracted existence?
"Should I keep the house key?" my property managers asks. He sees it in my eyes still reflecting the blue of the Montana sky, and Grinnell Lake reflecting the icy blue of the looming, but receding, glacier. He feels the twist of my hip, the arc of the tango ocho undercover in a Montreal pavilion. He notices the slight breeze that has followed me back from the chilly nights along the Elk Refuge boundaries outside of Jackson Hole. The sun glow steeping over Watchman's Crest in Utah's Zion cathedrals. The hanging plastic beads in Lafayette's trees as they bounce to a Zydeco beat. He knows I am not done.
"Yes," my wanderlust whispers through my sheepish smile.
But that will be a story for another time. Today, my energy needs to be here, to take care of post-car-accident business with the new truck, and touch the root of home and friend. Can I work yet the way I need to work? What if I can't? I talk a big game about my creative tool box of options, my alchemical wisdom in changing a negative to a positive. I came back to the fold to let all of this adventure dust settle out—to see what still needs a gentle and loving tweak—to look the lingering shadows straight on. And for the beauty, awe, laughter, tears, joy, struggle, and cutlery-bearing mosquitoes, I raise my glass to life. All of it. And lingering beneath the tales told, I know that the most important aspect of life on the road is that those parts of myself no longer relevant slowly break apart, and from those fissured crevices, my own sprout blooms a more fully petaled, most hearty, blossom called Gail.
"I may not totally know what I'm talking about here, but I'll put it out to you," offers my home based chiropractor. "When your attention spreads to your neck, what emotion are you feeling? Our emotions can block our healing too."
I reach for a tissue from a box on his desk. Without choice, I've had to hold steady and strong against any emotional gates flooding open. I had to research and purchase a vehicle, make it roadworthy. I needed to steadily allow practitioners to tweak my body and hold my head with the intention of release. I nudged myself to try activities, slowly, cautiously, to see what my body could and could not do. I couldn't return to my house half way through the year, so I had to find perspective—grabbing desperately into my rational alchemical mind. I still had to drive back across the breadth of the country.
Within this loving net of friends and healers, I allow myself now to drop my hold, soften into arms, weep.
"Not anger," I think. "Fear."
Fear that I won't completely heal. Fear that I won't be able to financially survive while I continue treatment. Fear that I will need to push myself too soon into a work load not good for my neck. Fear that if I do, I will re-damage what has made progress.
"No," I tell myself, "I won't allow those things to happen. I will find another way."
Friends have given me references to fill out my team. I've asked about liens. I've asked about partial settlements. I've called and left messages about case status updates from the victim advocacy department of the San Luis Obispo District Attorney's office where California's Marsey's Law victim rights allowed me to, at least, apply for some victim funds. When I can access my rational perspective, I know, in the big picture, all will be fine. All will get reimbursed. But, for now, where is the needed money?
"Don't be afraid to feel your emotions," he says, offering me another tissue. "It's part of the ongoing healing."
Chocolate and cream swirl in a leaf pattern that floats atop my hot chocolate. It's the small round corner table, metal chair, and privacy that attract me to Mocha Joe's on Main Street. The line forms at the counter and up the stairs to the street level. Most people get their coffee to go. A few meander into the next room of couches, tables and chairs. Up above my head, a row of books plumps out their bindings vying for more attention than the random boxes of game boards lingering below them. From this corner protected by book plumping and a side wall, I can shield myself from chatter. I can spread out, immerse myself in wordplay and explore the internet. Low lighting shadows me, and I do my best work from this place of anonymity.
Amy's Bakery is different—a wall of windows opens up to the view of the train tracks below, then a row of trees slicing across the divide of track and Connecticut River. Cheerier, this lighted celebration of yeast and sugar, breakfast and lunch, offers less solitude and more often than not, I cross paths with someone I know. But even in this lighted space, I hope to find myself backed into the corner, away from immediate view. I pull in, process word and image, memory and understanding.
This is my transition time, one foot dragging glacier and butte, the other exploring a familiar path again as if for the first time. I walk Main Street to see, to be seen, and also hide from being seen. I am a conundrum. But this is my road as I have traveled it. I, just I, decide when to unmask my smile, and when to hover in the shadows. I've evolved into this pace, this peace, this place. What it all will come to mean will surprise me, I'm sure.
I pull on my heels, and each ocho maneuvered turns me towards a different viewing point. I am an ever-deepening product of details that can only be seen during each twist of hip, each backward step and forward step—each danced tanda. Life holds me in a close embrace, wisps of hair pasted to my forehead and cheek, my breath tickling its neck, warm and moist. The music informs each subtle shift from one pressed step into another. And of course, I always invite playful embellishment. And as change turns my head more easily, my heart will have its say. Stay tuned and welcome me home!