Warm enough by the fire I can remove my socks. The lawn so wet when I step on it, it squirts. The first blooms of the year on some bush by the back door that smells of jasmine. Thank heavens for that bush. Tree frogs, croaking at dusk. Walking the grounds of our house the first time in weeks. That wood smoke smell, ours. Deer scat, fallen branches, piles of ground-up tree stumps waiting to be spread. And new chutes among the dead. Far off and yet I can taste it still, spring. Next in queue at the car wash, waiting its turn.

Of course the area in the kitchen by the refrigerator is just a shit show of power cords, credit cards, loose change, and water bottles…and the stains in our carpet will likely never come out, we’ll just need to wait until the pets have “moved on” to justify replacing it…and the cleaners do their best to dust our shelves and replace the knick knacks to their rightful spots. But what’s the right spot, in all this? And I just have to think, to consider the amount of loss I’ll feel when everyone is out of the house and it’s just me, positioning things exactly as they should be. 

Life, narrowed down to a slim field. Tidy, narrow.

Categories: musings, parenting, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, existentialism, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer