You couldn’t see the moon because of the clouds but with it almost full it made the night sky milky white. More wind had raked down branches throughout the yard, pine needles too. My new haz mat suit was waiting for me to get the rat carcass from under the house, the crawl space. That and the standing water I’d need to suck out with the dry vac. I’d place some traps along the perimeter of the wall too, perpendicular to catch them as they ran along the sides. Maybe I could get all that done in an hour and have time to finish decorating for Christmas. Funny to think how different the house looked above and underneath. A kind of parallel, upside down world below. Hades.

Twenty-six years ago I met a woman at the Oddfellows Hall in Seattle. She was the director of a play a friend asked me to help him work on, making live sound effects backstage. She and I went on our first date December 5 and got married five years later. We reemerged in our driveway in the suburbs for dinner reservations down in Issaquah and I paused thinking isn’t that funny, all that time between us. Poof

When the wind blows the lights hanging by the windows rattle and I think about the co-dominant trees out front by the road. What it would be like to have one slice through the roof while I’m sleeping. Insurance policies. Instead I just wait for the wind to stop. And think about getting the standing water out from under the house, taking care of things, all the tending and mending on the peripheries of our lives and what’s most important at the very center.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Nostalgia, pacific northwest