Space to Be Young Again

Home. Oh, blissful thought!

It's been a grueling pace to keep. I got home from New York at midnight last night. I leave for Richmond on Thursday. I'm going to Colorado next Thursday. I was in North Carolina last week.

Late this afternoon, I took the car for a spin down to Chipotles (Sunday dinner is a rather sketchy affair at our house, on account of our big Sunday brunch) to pick up one of my favorite meals: a steak and chicken burrito, and a cranberry juice. Somehow the cranberry juice is a perfect and necessary complement to all those spicy Mexican tastes. Somebody had left The Parent Trap soundtrack in the car. I spun the dial to track 8, and upped the volume.

I've been waiting since I can't remember
I've been waiting just to find somebody true
Somebody like you
Do you know, I'll never let you go!

This song has never been a love ditty to me. It's always been a hymn. I waited so long to find God, and though what really happened was that he found me, and though it is really the case that he won't let me go, still, whenever I remember who he is, my response is a fierce and exultant "I'll never let you go!" There are so many somebodies who turn out to be false; and he is somebody true.

It was a perfect day, sunny and mild. I found myself relaxed just because I was driving along familiar streets. I could have eaten my dinner outside Chipotles and then strolled down the sidewalk to Borders, but the mood wasn't quite right. I wanted to be home. I wanted to soak up home as one drinks a glass of water after a long, hard workout. So I brought my dinner back and ate in the kitchen, talking to Charity and Grandpa.

Danya and I had a splendid time being together. We saw again the beautiful mountains of western Pennsylvania and upstate NY--on the drive back they were particularly stunning because of the contrast between early evening sunshine and a rainstorm that chased us home. But it was also a weary-making trip, full of decisions and adulthood. It was a necessary and voluntary exile.

Tonight, home for a brief space, I feel like a child again. I found myself thinking of the Longaevi a little while ago, thanks to Stars. She came for graduation and we went down to talk in the gazebo.

"Do you remember the fairies you made up out of those Rhetoric vocab lists that we were memorizing?"
"Oh!" I said, receiving the slight but fragrant shock of sweet old memories. "Oh, yes! What were their names? What a child I was, still making up fairies as a junior!"
"My favorite was the littlest," Stars laughed.
"That's right... her name was Posy."

And suddenly, they were all before me. I remembered everything: Paradoxus Maximus of the green wings, Simile the beautiful, Chiasmus the dandy, Deton and Polly, my blond twins, Litotes, the black velvet marshwiggle, and of course Posy. Her full name was Onomotapoeia, and she lived in my jewelry box for a summer. Their descriptions and adventures are all on this blog, in the archives of last April, May, and June. I remembered that Latin is their language, and that they live in the gazebo, and that I shall be able to visit them there again this autumn.

I don't know why I remembered the Longaevi tonight, except that I was combing out my hair. Brushing my hair out always makes me think otherworldly or childish thoughts, especially when it is rather curly from being up all day. When I was a little girl it was waist-length, very blond, and Daddy would brush and braid it for me every night before bed. He did that for all three of his girls, but we had to wait our turns. Charity's braid always looked like a pirate pigtail.

It is good to feel young again--I felt so awfully old and grown-up in New York.