I can smell them from here, the flowers that we buried Tanya's desk beneath, she's twenty-seven as of yesterday and the sting of age is gone.
We planned and we plotted and bought five brimming bouquets of daisies, one in each imaginable colour -- purple, orange, crimson, white, and yellow and laid them every so carefully and covered every spare space from blanketing the keyboard to losing the monitor behind a jungle of violet.
And we had too much sugar today, no time for breakfast or lunch with the chaos of putting ourselves back together after three days of nary a thought about anything technologically related, but the doughnuts were everywhere and I fell the sugar coursing through my brain.
My hamsters are running ragged, but it'll be time to grab food soon and go make cf's little life miserable with it. Watch me pick something he's allergic to...
After that, it's drinking with Peter and Tia and whoever else joins the fray, I hugged Peter goodbye yesterday after the movie at Ian's place, after setting up e-deals and introducing introvert to introvert, and today with the sugar and strangeness and the fact that we've shared one too many intimate secrets in the glaring space between shining beige desks, the dynamic is different.
But it's good.
(speaking of introverts, you're right cf, about them being the geeks that never got invited to the parties in high school. Neither was I. Were you? What I like about them is that even if you were, you're still invited to *their* parties.)
Maybe it's the sugar high, maybe it's the fact that David and I spoke late into the morning this morning, about things that I've been terrified to breach (and ended up whispering furiously into his ear because I couldn't take being afraid anymore), about things that shook me to the core this weekend, and we talked and screwed and talked some more, and the bed rocked continuously until the sunrise with our laughter, the shifting of our bodies into positions where we could be closer to each other, and our occasional bursts of sexual activity in between kisses and whispers.
I spent the weekend with children. I spent yesterday repeating that sentence, as many times as I could to as many people, desperate to come to terms with any of it.
I spent Friday night, until four in the morning, with a sixteen-month-old Vincent who calls me Auntie now, asleep upside down in my arms and waking up to occasionally grin at me, pull my chin to sing him another lullaby, or readjust himself so that he was once again breathing into my right eyesocket.
I spent Saturday with my uncle's little girls, their ankles wrapped about my shoulders, carrying them as though they were a cloak I'd wrapped about my shoulders to keep out the austere chill of the marble mausoleum that my parents call a house. It was my mother's birthday, and all the pollacks that they'd moved here with nearly twenty years ago were there, not pinching cheeks for the first time, but speaking with me. Asking me questions, accepting my jokes, appreciating what wit I had the courage to respond to them with.
At once I was suddenly adult, and at the same time I was confidante to two little girls, both terrified of the strangers but thrilled to be clinging to my torn jeans.
And then Sunday. Friday's eight hours of gentle baby snores had prompted enough terrified introspection about Sunday's planned cycling-in-the-old-port-with-David-and-his-daughters.
Sunday's chaos of rollerblades and skinned knees and my elbow having that argument with the sidewalk kept me occupied, even when little Emily needed help climbing back up the steep slope to the car, and she came to me rather than her dad. when she needed help eating her ice cream, or when Olivia needed to hold someone's hand to make it over the railroad tracks and wanted mine.
But Sunday evening, the sun gone but having left it's mark on all of our burnished cheeks, two little redheads sitting patiently in my lap having their hair braided for bedtime so that in the morning it would be easier for daddy to brush out the knots, two little redheads wanting help with dinner, needing the movie explained, wanting me to curl up in bed with them and read them stories so that they could fall asleep, watching in wonder as they read the words aloud themselves, having memorized all the books that I'd loaned David to read to them...
Sunday evening was a little overwhelming and I raced out on David, too early, too quickly, terrified suddenly of these little girls and their sweet little hands and what it means to my life. Obscene Deity, my darling, it's not the permanence that's terrifying, it's the change and accepting the staggering responsability... Or maybe it's the sheer foreign quality of a new thought paradigm.
Either way, I raced out and met up with Ollie and Justin and played Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast (my first console game!) and kicked ass until I passed out in a cold sweat.
And yesterday I whispered that I loved him in mid-thrust, thinking that maybe getting it out of me would ease the terror.
It didn't, but I don't care. And I'm not afraid, either.
Except maybe a little bit when it comes to having drinks with Peter and Tia, cuz man... I may smell like a fish but I can't drink like one anymore...
Ahem. *grin*
I love you guys too. What the hell, I can always blame it on the sugar. Fuck it, I'm outta here, the new engine can wait 'til tommorrah.
~