On the one hand I'm finally learning to distinguish whether we're heading East or West, North or South, and when I ask how we're oriented with respect to this or that street, my guess is usually right.
On top of that, I've been here nary a week and already there are numbers I should be calling, and some that I actually want to be calling.
On the other hand, the one that is missing fingers due to everytime I've stuck it in the mouth of the goose that I know always bites me when I feed it...
I'm six hundred kilometres away again, and a five minute attempt to say "hi mom, I'm trying to be your daughter some more" erased the lingering tamarind of Mr. Pyke's root-vegetable-casserole, erased the quiet lilt as he sings along to the six CDs permanently ensconced in his car, erased the sunny brilliance of lunch this afternoon with Sally, another one of those humans that can not possibly exist.
Oh Steven, you'd like her.
Five minutes were long enough to talk about Dad and what he's doing to mom because of me, to talk about how yes, I'm still not a doctor, and yes, I'm still a failure since the last time you checked, oh and no, I appreciate the offer but I don't want to meet your single lawyer friend that works on Bay St. and...
Oh mom, what happened to those perfect twenty minutes when we boiled beets together and watched the water turn a perfect shade of carmine or cadmium or whatever the inksellers are calling it today?
Oh mom, I cherished those twenty minutes. THe next time I have the strength in my throat, I will remember to tell you that.
In the meantime, I am going to revel in the fact that before he wandered downstairs to pop O.C. and Stiggs in the VCR, Mr. Pyke let me pull just a little harder on his hand, and he hugged me the way I always wished you might have.
Once.
In the meantime, though -- I am still impossibly fortunate that I get that sort of hug from so many places
that
I should really stop whining.
It's just a little difficult those first seconds after the phone hits the cradle.
Just a little.
I'm feeling better already, though - ten minutes rebound time?
Not bad, not even for a monstre.