Resipiscence

Everything changed whileI was away. The hill on the corner on the main road was mowed away to make room for a McDonald's. Hell, I remember when the grocery store was where kids rode their dirtbikes.

Sigismund's voice started cracking.

Aelgifu got taller.

Autolycus is getting slower. Mom says he's developing dementia. He still recognizes me, though, and plops his big golden head in my lap for me to stroke.

I've changed. I was the only silent one at the dinner table, watching the currents of conversation surge around me and wondering when it was that I really started to swim in another direction.

So I've packed up my room in a dozen or so boxes and myriad trash bags, and wandered around the house in between stacks of boxes with labels scribbled in marker. And I discovered that I wasn't sad to be leaving, or happy to be gone. I felt... nothing, because I'd really left some time ago and this was just observng the formalities.

It's a bit like when my mom's dad died. I'd stopped seeing him five or so years previous when he'd forgotten who I was. In the same way I feel like this house, this family has moved on without me.

The only thing I'll really be sad to leave is the bald cypress I got on Arbor Day in fifth grade. We were told it was a red oak, and spent years trying to figure out what it was. (Our family seems destined for mistaken identities where I'm concerned.) It's the only thing around here that's truly mine.

The new house is in one of those new developments of a style I call "house farms." Dozens of identical houses all lined up in perfect rows with dinky lawns. Frankly, I don't care. I feel like it's just storage until I can finally break free for good. Free to find my own home.

I called Hans in between stints of packing and trashing, from my cell, in the same spot I ran up such a horrendous bill a thousand years ago in December. He pissed me off and I ended up hanging up on him in midsentence, which he called back to tell me was the most like his ex that I've ever been.

I plan to tell him how much I'm beginning to despise those comparisons.

Jay asked me via IM a few days ago if I ever think about what might have been had things gone differently with me and Hans. I didn't answer at the time, mostly because Hans was hanging over my shoulder and I'd be damned if I was going to say anything for him to overanalyze.

Truth is sometimes I do. And the conclusion I come to is that honestly I would have ended it myself. I can't see myself binding my life to his, growing old with him, and that makes all the difference. Most of the reason said breakup affected me the way it did was because I wasn't prepared for it. I saw that relationship as an inevitable rise and fall and instead it took me down at midarc.

While packing I came across the books that Mom got off Focus on the Family for me. I briefly considered just throwing them away and forgetting they existed, but a thought occured to me that Mom might wonder where they were and I'd have to make up some vague excuse about them getting lost in the move, etc.

So I ended up putting them in the bag of stuff I'm taking back to school with me.

It's a funny thing about people needing rituals. For all their complaining about dry, lifeless liturgy devoid of meaning, even Protestants have rituals. And one of the things that most attracted me to Wicca back in my more religiously fluid days is the physicality of spellcasting, with tools and ingredients in a certain way-- rituals and ceremonies. Morning rituals like my taking Zoloft. Petty ceremonies like rolling up windows and turning off radio and headlights before turning off the car engine. Weddings. Funerals. Baptisms. Bell, book, and candle. Something in a human aches for ritual. Maybe the familiarity, maybe the order, or just the need to believe that our actions have impact.

So when I go home to school, I'm going to take the books and a box of matches and drive out to the beach. Spend the day there. And i'm going to burn them in the sand, where the tide will rise to wash the ashes away and the breeze will lift to blow away the smoke. No trace. (And I'll be able to say that I have no idea where the books are.)

Maybe I'll go alone. Maybe take Hans with me. I'm not sure if he'd really understand why I need to do it. I could care less. It's a way for me to make a physical symbol for a spiritual thing, a ritual, that does nothing in and of itself but in the working changes the worker.

In that, I suppose it's a bit like a prayer.

Labels: family