There are no leaves on these trees.

The Patient First next door to the Panera had Mandy's car in the parking lot, and when I texted her that I was creeping on her she answered how small our home town is.

It's not a town, where she and I are from, it's a county.  Due south of Baltimore. But in 2011 with chain stores and strip malls up and down Route 2, that doesn't make what she said any less true.  It's good to be home, there are few things more real and heartening to me than my family and friends.  But I am tired and don't feel too well.  Everyone here is sick, everyone.  Mandy was feeling ill and thought she might be catching what her kids and man had, I'm feeling it because of five days without my morning practice: meditation and writing.  And because there are no leaves on these trees which feels so potently voyeuristic to me, and it's so damn cold.

How quick to fall off the beam, I thought, and called Brooks to make an artist's date.  Erika told me about Zelda's paintings at a gallery at Hopkins, so hopefully that will remedy my soul.  The first week of December on the mountain in NorCal I was walking outside in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill. It was winter and I felt vital still and knew it, I was charged and alive. I remembered what Justin said to me in July, jogging by my side from the inlet rocks along the beach in Ocean City, down by the Pier.

You're elemental, Kel.  You need the elements to be well.  He's so energetic, Justin, and I remember us happy and diving in the water either on or just after our run.  He was right, and I knew it that day months later and a coast away, in the 50 degree mountain air.  My cure for seasonal affective is no more than regular contact with the air, the earth, the sunshine, the trees, the sea.  So it's not just the cold and lac of light that bothers me, it's the absence of a lifestyle.  It's an outdoor wellness regimen that I need.

That, and my regular quiet routine.

I cancelled on Mandy, we cancelled on each other.  I am going to Tim and Mary's tonight to do what I know to do this time of year back east.  It's time to hibernate.  I need sleep.

Smoke and Flowers

Inside of what changes, which is everything, there are little things, too. These are the bones of who we are, what help us know how to comfortably flesh out and wear our real skin.The weather today is so fabulous that to mar it with words would ruin my experience.

I have a lot to process. I returned from my trip over the bridge last night. I was exhausted. I feel like there should be periods between each of those words. I. was. exhausted. I couldn't even talk to mom about all that happened, it was too much.

Eventually I gave her some of the basics. What I was able to say I had a still moment of clarity that was the exact same as the night I taught my first ESL class. Remember I called you when it was over? I remember every detail, sitting in my car that night on the phone with you. Knowing I'd stepped foot on a new, totally unknown path. The big, calm feeling of it. Yesterday, sitting in my car, was exactly like that. But even this morning in the sun in my torn salt-weakened beach chair barefeet in the gravel of the front driveway at the Pines, sitting still, I just wanted quiet. I relaxed in to the tight feeling in my jaw and the thick-creased feeling of crippledness in my shoulders and neck that scream money!?!? and sat inside the bad feelings until it all released. I breathed in the sunlight and fresh air. I returned to peace and happiness of today, this moment, the sound of tree-breeze. Nothing but this, only this, only this. My smile was big and I didn't even realize it.

My alt boys station on Pandora is nailing it right now. What's really on my mind, what I came here to write about, is friendship and familial ties. Mandy bought a house in Pasadena over the summer. I cross the Anne Arundel County line and freak out she said, she is talking about crossing in to HoCo and I laughed because I get it. We are sitting across from one another at her kitchen table. We are thirty-somethings. She has two kids now. She told this funny story (she's the best story-teller I know, pulls out no stops just gets ghetto with it and then pushes it even past that so much so that I've sometimes questioned if she makes them up they're so often that over the top) about her cousin who lives on the line between Baltimore City and county and I am secretly smiling the whole time because that's what I want, that life, those I dont give a fuck we'd never call the cops 'round here people. I think of my family roots all Brooklyn Park inside the edge of the city prideful and blind and righteous, working-class Catholically-arrogant and equally innocent all of us, scared to get out, and more scared not to, too. Being a kid on Church Street, in my memories from that young time the sun was always shining. There was always sunshine on the side of the house, on the cement sidewalk, on Grammy's tablecloth. On Pop's records and tea cup. My uncles were twenty-something, wild-eyed, like their sons now. I was a baby-grl, three, four, six, ten. Enraptured with it all.

Last year when Mandy moved home she and her mom and her brother and his fiance all got a house in Crownsville, which is this heavily wooded suburb outside of Annapolis where we moved when I was 11 and where I grew up until I moved to the Eastern Shore in 1998. I clung to that, to her house there, to walking in knowing where the coffee mugs were, where food was, what her mom would smell like (smoke and floral fragrance) when she received my hello-hug. I never thought it would mean something to me, I thought I needed to see the world and that was what mattered. Mandy said that too the other night, leaning against her dishwasher, adding to her grocery list. Talking about where we are from. Talking about how good it feels to be with people again who get her. The little things.

She tosses me a towel yesterday morning and tells me to shower in her bathroom. It lands next to my head. It's almost ten, she's been up for hours with her kids and already's dropped Derek off at pre-school. I am laying in her bed, we slept there together and talked each other to sleep like we used to the winter we were nineteen and lived in my basement at mom's in Crownsville. When we would sleep on the pull out couch with the metal bar in our backs or spoon in my twin bed. This woman knows the story of every man I have ever loved. I know every one of hers. We make decisions now for practical reasons. We are still wild as the wind. She ate oodles of noodles on Tuesday while we talked across her table. Just like back then.

I've always looked up to her. Always looked to her for direction, looked not to what she says but to how she makes decisions, what she does and the authority which she uses when I cant find my own. Last year she moved in to that house in Crownsville and spent time with her family and her family's--her brother's--friends every day. I took that sense of familiarity to the Pines and rooted in to my own. Tuesday I drove to Pasadena to see my cousin play soccer, then met a bunch more other cousins on Edmunson Ave in the city to eat grilled cheeses. Then went back home, Mandy's home her own home she owns in Pasadena, in the County, to be with her.

I can't imagine being any better--any more arrogant, any more innocent--any more aware, anyway, than this...

Thunder, The County, Sean. Memphis. Rounded-out inside.

Wanna get breakfast? It's 6:25 am and one of the first things I say.

Well, not the first, I've already shared my upon waking deep thought for the morning about the big changes he's upon, and also greeted him a happy US-in-the-World-Cup Day.

Kelly you are a fucking dump truck he says and I say when I answer something like dude you have no idea, like you cant even comprehend the amount of food I ate on my vacation, or for that matter the canyon that must be in my gut it's got to be as big at least as one of those little ones in Colorado, you know like the ones next to a big mesa? I am laughing a little it is early but I am up inside, and the laugh is not the cry-ey laugh kind just a chuckle.

I dont get the irony of mesa meaning table til now.

Last night I think I was driving us both a little crazy. I'd been on his couch all day, and it was a big day, for him at least, and I was priming my self since 9 am to drive to Brooklyn and pick up my bridesmaid dress then make the final truck to the beach. Finally at like 8 at night or something I heard the thunder and went out to sit under the sky on his front step where I feel like I've sat a million times and had to take some time to make my case, which is to say just sit quiet a while with the Nature and me, which is to say the same thing. To sit quiet awhile, find the without, find the within.

The sky was blue but wild pungent yellow behind the clouds. It felt so Maryland and in all, it was good, satisfying to be home. It's funny when you leave a while you come back and see all the subtle quiet things you take for granted. Sitting in the thunder heat with that yellowgreen sky put me in mind of Mandy, who I've seen sit like that a million times. Just watching, feeling the ripe. I had the shift feeling of light air happen then, like some ether layer of me rustling about then settling back in to me again, which actually is recognition, and realized yet again how many little things quantify a place. I went in after a while and looked at my brother with must have been that blank look on my face which is how we do, me and him, without knowing it when we are trying to cover where we've been. What we dont ever get is blank for us means the same thing as transparent and the only one in the world who can read that layer of see-through on me is him. And maybe mom. He laughed it is the laugh that always made me used to feel embarrassed because I always confused it as laughing at me, but I am older now and get that it is just laughter because he knows. Do you want some ice cream I said and he laughed some more and then said Kel, why dont you at least drive to Brooklyn and get your dress? Get out and do something at least take a drive you dont have to drive all the way home. We are afterall suburb kids, taking drives is what he know to do. He doesn't say that part about suburb kids that is mine for right here. Yea yea that's good that's what I'll do I said But you'll have to go right now just get in the car and motor before it's closed he answered and so that's what I did.

I touched down at BWI the night before, texted him I'm here, still on the plane. His car was waiting outside the black and metal mechanics of the baggage claim, under the cement that feels post-apocalypse underground and smells stale and like gas and where you cant even see a single plane. I love it there though and am happy to see him and Jamie waving at me, then I get in, and Jamie apologized immediately for being distant which I didn't notice then went on to say she just got a call from the Vice President of her company in Texas, he needed to talk to her ASAP about an opportunity. I wanted pizza so Seanie immediately drove us to the closet mall, it was near 9pm, and him and me ate pizza from a woodfire oven while she sat in the car on the phone.

Memphis is a long way away, and it all happened so quick, and I can write about it on here becasue in an hour or so from now we'll meet his friends downtown to watch the US soccer game and he will tell them then, and by this afternoon I'm sure most of the family will have found out becasue dad will likely have talked to uncle Tim. They are leaving Thursday, wont even be at the family reunion this weekend. Yesterday I didn't feel a thing today I feel a little like my heart is being taken from me, but all the same I know without any question that for them this is the exact right thing. It all happened so quick, Jamie is in Manayunk CraigsListing their apartment and doing all she can in 48 hours to tie up with her current clients there. He and I sat on his couch most of the day yesterday tightening his resume and other contacts and cover letters and stuff, and watching soccer on tv.

When I got on to route a hundred to head towards Brooklyn Park I couldn't shake that huge rounded feeling of something about to happen, but being in the calm right before it is to come. I knew this feeling wasn't about my brother, that this is more about me and his news was precursor of what's to come. Memphis is his big thing and what they've been waiting for and what we've all been secretely holding our breath in hopes that it wouldn't come, which is selfish but true. None of us knew they'd get transferred that far. I support him a hundred percent though, like I said some things are just right and you know it, you can feel it the way the tide of it fits curved and rounded, and retreats when the energy of it finally comes to fruition, and feels like relief and peace in your soul.

I drove to Brooklyn Park next to the biggest Maryland clouds, full of thunder and white scary lightening smelling ripe as cloves but never dropping any rain. Just passed the beltway where you pick up the harbor tunnel I got of to go south on route 2, and curving round the roundabout I had the most natural sensation of being on my way to visit Gram. It took me a full few seconds to realize, no, no she's dead now, has been a full 13 years and her house in Brooklyn on Church Street sold that summer, 97, first time I went traveling right after in fact I'd gotten home. And there was instead of the sweet ache just a settled feeling of mmm-hmmm, of acknowledgement, of all things passing, and for way more than the first time I had the sense again of much my whole time on the Eastern Shore seemed like a dream. Not the surreal, make-believe way, but in the way of waking so that you cant remember a darn piece of what went on the night before behind your eyes. And how you know it was important, you can feel it, but it's over now so may as well go on and greet the day. And how if anyone or thing could go ahead and show you, hit repeat on the dream button so that you could watch your dreams with the waking thoughts of day, how you wouldn't believe it was in all true, anyway, because the regularly conscious part of you slept all the way through. It's how I felt coming home, like home back to Anne Arundel county, like it's not been a day or more since I've been away--forget those 12 years on the shore. It's how I felt, foreign, when I unlocked my car.

In the beginning of the journey that Liz Gilbert goes on in Eat, Pray, Love she spends a month or more, I guess actually like 4 months, eating her way across Italy. It's healing to her soul. That's how I've felt, where I've been, from the first night in Yachats at the Adobe with Gretchen when she ordered us, literally, 4 entire enormous plates of food. We laughed and ate and ate and laughed the rest of the month away. It's felt so good to just eat. Good, savory, sweet, ethnic, rich, fatty, delicious food. It feels good, too, to be home.