The Real Answers

The less said about my time in New York the better, I think, except that spending time with my fantastic cousin Delores, the inimitable Coleen, the scintillating Molly, the luscious Maxwell and the lovely and fascinating Caroline, who has no online presence that I’m aware of but did come to meet us for drinks on her own damn wedding anniversary, was the unmitigated highlight. Maybe one day I’ll be able to talk about the non-beautiful-women-I-know-through-the-internet aspects of the trip, but for right now all I can say is how much I love those people and how grateful I am to them for making a difficult week more bearable. I’m glad to be home. Or “home,” really. It’s crazy over here right now.

Since I returned to Seattle on Sunday night it’s been GO GO HURRY GO with a to-do list cross-referenced with a spreadsheet integrated with a small mountain goat just in case I need to make a blood sacrifice to get done everything I need to get done. The blue house is festively chaotic right now, what with me moving out and having taken over the purple futon part of the living room and Ian and Katie moving in and having taken over the cloud room and everything else. It’s all bags and boxes and a new stereo system and new dishes in the cupboards and being unable to find anything because a) it’s in a plastic storage bin down at my cousin’s house or b) I took it to Value Village last week or c) it’s all in a pile in the backyard soaking in gasoline and waiting for me to throw a match on it. And yet? After having given away or stored most of my stuff? My pack is still too heavy. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that, except maybe develop some muscle tone.

I feel like I’ve been at work this past day and a half, spending a lot of time on the phone and writing email. I slept in a little this morning but yesterday I woke up at 6:30 and was checking off list items by 7:30, which is slightly less impressive when you understand that “Locate a towel with which to dry off post-shower” and “Ascertain where they hid my oatmeal” were list items. Everything is pretty much getting done and I’m doing okay starting to live out of my bag and I’m making sure to take breaks and eat snacks and read books when I get a little overwhelmed, which isn’t happening as much as you might expect, if you’re personally acquainted with my tendency for emotional excess. I haven’t freaked out or cried or anything. I feel like I’m doing fine.

This is because, I suspect, I have entered a state of mid-level denial. Running through my head is the constant metronome of email Tracy about the VIN for the car and cancel the National Geographic subscription and make copies of the passport and pick up travelers’ checks and don’t forget to buy razors and cough drops when you’re at the drugstore and make sure to put your earrings away properly instead of just putting them on the table by the futon as you might ordinarily do and put the last couple of boxes out on the porch so you stop tripping over them and on and on and on. Underneath that there’s nothing else. There’s no I’m Not Going To See Her Again For A While and Of Course I’m Getting To Know Him Just When I’m About To Leave or I Want To Spend Every Minute With Them Before I Go or This Is The Last Time In A Long Time We’ll All Be Together.

Many years ago, when we were getting Manya, first of the Key Girls to get married, into her dress the morning of her wedding, she blanked out a little bit. Ashley looked over at our dear friend, who was just sort of standing there with her dress half on, looking around vaguely for a pair of shoes to wear down to the beach. The rest of us had all been going “I can’t BELIEVE you’re getting MARRIED can you BELIEVE it MANYA you’re getting MARRIED in like FIFTEEN MINUTES married married married Manya Manya Manya!” but Ashley saw the look on her face, distant and inward, and figured out what was happening in her head. She told her, “Just pretend it’s your quince, Manya. Just find your shoes and put on your dress and go down to your quince, where you have a very nice date and we’re going to be your court of honor. Let’s go! Quince time!” And we all went downstairs and it turned out to be a wedding and not a formal coming-of-age celebration but it was fun anyway and a good time was had by all.

That’s what I’m doing these last couple of days in infuriatingly beautiful Seattle, location of some of my dearest and most hard-won friends, not to mention a sense of self I never thought I’d attain when I moved here seven years ago: pretending I’m turning fifteen and not getting married. Something big is happening, that much is clear, because a lot of people want to talk to me about my future plans. “Between twelve and fifteen months,” I say when people ask how long I’ll be gone, and “I don’t know yet” when people ask what I’ll be doing or where I’ll be living, and
“Because I want to”, when people ask why I’m going.

But while those may be, like, the factual answers, they’re not the real ones. The real answers to all those questions are “I’m not going anywhere, why do you ask, and I’d love to go to your birthday party in September and I sure am enjoying my vacation from work right now and for some reason I seem to be moving out of the blue house and I don’t know why instead of a closet I have only a green backpack and where’s my bed and what happened to my good shampoo and I feel just the same so why is everything so different?”