Happy One Year Anniversary To Me

A year ago today, the Empire Builder swung into Portland, Oregon from the north and the east, carrying me in its carpet belly.  Knees up on my wide Amtrak seat, I pressed against the window and through the green, I watched the industrial yards and piney hills grow and shrink back, fell in love at first sight with the slinky gray Willamette, followed tiny cars with my eyes as they swooped over the river on the great winged Interstate, and tired to imagine it all in the moment, the life I would lead, the people I would know, the bed I'd fall into, the neighborhoods I'd roam, my places, my own, all inconceivable.

And this past Thursday, on a whim, I threw a potluck, called out to my friends, "Please eat with me!"  Bring your oafy boyfriend and your bearded husband, maybe carrot sticks and wedges of grapefruit, let's sit together and tuck in to a giant pot of vegetable soup, let's split a beer, let's gather up our knit newborn caps and send them overseas in a cardboard box, let's groan together over sweet vanilla ice cream laid over slices of hot zucchini bread.  And they came, and they filled up the room.  We ate to the bottom of the pot, we crowded the kitchen and stepped on each others' toes.

At the end of the night, with all guests gone, Kellam threw off the lights, and I turned on the dishwasher.  The three of us fell into our chairs in the dark.  We sat and talked for a long time about generations and then about Battlestar Galactica.

Oh!  Sometimes I remember!  I didn't buy this life at the Target Greatlands or from a college catalogue.  I didn't inherit it from my mom or dad or older sisters, I'm not borrowing from my little brother's posse anymore.  One year in the Pacific Northwest and this is what I have.  It is so quiet, most of the time I don't even notice it on my skin.

But for the record, I know something's stirring.  I feel it in my sleep as I turn to my side.  I remember in a blue glimpse, a half-breath.  I hear it in a church service, burning against the wall, words coming from a man I hardly know, I hardly care to know.

I want to call the stirring growing.

I want to call it Lies-Turned-Down.

I want to catch it Once in my palm, just to see if I'm getting it right, just to see if I'm aiming true and not wandering, not wasting, not passing on the great adventure.

Onward and Upward?

ONWARD AND UPWARD!