Finding Words

It's a balmy evening in Texas, humid and quiet without even a hint of breeze, under a waxing gibbous moon. It's a perfect evening for a barbecue, for stargazing, or for cold drinks with friends. It's strange to remember that it was only three weeks ago, exactly three weeks ago as I write this, that I was shivering on a chilly hill country evening, counting shooting stars, and speaking of everything and nothing. Time has a strange way of expanding and contracting at will.

I'm struck by the ephemeral nature of it all. Memories can be so fleeting, and even the ones I've learned by heart have this tendency to morph into something slightly different, into some imagined reality, not so far from the actual one, yet not quite close enough to suit me. I can still remember the taste of his lips, but it's fading much faster than I'd like. I have photos to remind me of the contours of his face, but they don't show his expressions, or the way his eyes light up when he smiles.

I have this sense lately that even when I'm all by myself, I'm never entirely alone anymore, as though I'm carrying with me an extra set of eyes, to which I wish to show everything I see. And in my imagination, at least, I can do that. I can explain the relative comfort of a balmy May evening when sweat drips down my back long after nightfall, and how much of a relief it is after the heat of the day that precedes it, and how the salt on my skin is tied to the salt in the Gulf that I call home, and the salt in my blood, and how it's all part of me. In my imagination, this is all sufficient, but I can't explain it in real life, not with all the words in the world, from two thousand miles away.

The challenge in all of this is learning to embrace the present, to live fully and learn from today, instead of wistfully longing for the future or trying to recreate the past, but realizing that makes it no easier. So I've been planning, I, who hate to plan anything, lest I box myself into a corner. I've been planning three months ahead, six months ahead, a year ahead, because it gives me a sense of control over all the uncertainty, and it gives me something to do in the meantime, something to make me appreciate the present, as I look ahead to the future.

For now, impatient and restless though I am, I can let that be enough.