Fall Back, Leap Ahead

I've things to say to you, don't you know, conversations to have. We've ghosts, sure, but these are phantoms in the present, these lines that linger unsaid between us these weeks. I miss you, and there's that, always, but even outside of that there are conversations I wish we'd have, conversations that in the past have held the flavor of taffy - push and pull and stretch, words on each end unsaid but still somehow resistant - but I'd hope would in the present have the taste of collaboration, cooperation, shared ideas and opinions. Most of all, your thoughts I want.

To Spokane I'm for Christmas headed, and sure there's the dragon of meeting another family, of snappy introductions and the crazy, names and faces to put together and furthermore remember, but there's also this idea of time and time and whatever wherever happens next, these narratives I've so long preferred to write - past tense, mostly - than live. I don't know what else to say that I'd rather not share in our confidence - wavering, mostly - alone.

I don't know what your plans are quite for Christmas - I suspect because you don't yet know what your plans are for Christmas - but your plans will affect my plans, and more and more I suspect this means I'll yet another holiday not share with you. I do not care for that thought much, but so it is; so it has been, and so it once more is. I'll look ahead rather than behind, perhaps - to April, spring break, maybe, if I'll make the weeks work right. To August, a return for my things, this trip back west and with the folks, to this idea that maybe I'm actually settling down in some sort of strange way, foreign as the idea may feel even as I'll roll it over my tongue, force it out of my throat. Mom, on the phone, laughed - but then, so did I. Stranger things I've heard, I suppose.

And there's this dream semi-frequent these past few weeks - of this motley crew, together. We've our patchwork family, or did once, back in the days of brewing and beer-drinking and the laughter that ran until Jon and Anna were crying and the rest of us held our sides, stitched. 'Those aren't tears, sweetheart,' will forever retain a special place in my heart, and so too that year spent in the basement, closet full of beer and a heart full with friends even as it was jagged with cracks and holes. I've these dream, though, as I was saying, of those that could here together be. There'd be some troubles, sure - always there are, with shared expectations and responsibilities and cooking and cleaning and different ways of living coming together - but we'd come together just the same, sharing a life, sharing a home, sharing each other. So the dream goes, anyways.

Put other ways: these trails deserve more feet like yours, like Brandon's; these slopes deserve more instructors like Jocelyn's; these children deserve more instructors like you. Most of all, though, what I mean to say is this: I want you to find a place that feels more like home than any home has before. I want you to find the sort of home that you physically ache for when you're away, like I do these mountains I've made my own. I'm selfish, sure, and I'll hope that home ends up being the same place I find a home for myself - brothers belong together, really - but I'll understand and accept and support that home you make wherever you make it. I say this hoping not to tug - as in the taffy days of yesteryear - but to offer kindness, a hug. More than anything else, I just mean to say I miss you.