The rain falls. The dryer hums. The dog upstairs runs in circles barking at the thunder. His owners chase after him. The cat lifts his head to the ceiling, then settles back down again. The TV is on, but muted, and it's 10. The hour where I hear that reasonable people go to bed during the week. The hour where I usually start to rev up -I'm a night owl. Always have been.

I took the train home tonight, shuffled with the masses, my Audible book playing from my iphone. It's been a long time since I've done the subway thing.

I came home with the first raindrops. Ate supper, put the laundry in the dryer. A quiet night. I opened my laptop to begin to work. I work every single night now. I've never been so work-busy in my entire life. The problem is -that isn't even extraordinary anymore. It's expected.

"I'm leaving now but I'll be back on around 8," I say to my boss. Sometimes I want him to protest.

He never does.

Tonight, I'm not going to work. I'm going to lay here, under the white blanket and read my book and listen to the rain.

The world will wait.

Obama2013

It was a wonderful weekend.

Spin

And we spin and we spin,
as I let the world in
And we dance and we dance
as I watch the days pass.

My little poem there pretty much sums up this month for me. I honestly can't remember a busier one, and I'm so uncertain about everything that I broke out in stress acne on one side of my chin. Awesome.

Let's see. I had a friend stay here for about 3 weeks -we've been friends for so long, and even though we go such long gaps of time without seeing each other (he's a professional campaigner for democratic politics, and hops around the the country on different races), we generally can pick up where we left off. Somewhat. Knowing, too, that he is guarded  and knowing that our lives over the past ten years since we sat together sharing a desk in 2003 as summer interns in DC for the first time....well, they've changed. And we've changed.

But not so much that we didn't have three great weeks of cooking, and watching TV and reconnecting. Talks until midnight. Wondering will we/won't we? What is this?

He left mid-afternoon today, bound for another state -taking all his things with him. I didn't know. He sent me a hasty text while I was at work.

"Thanks for everything."

Gone. Abrupt.

Gone but gradually, is my best friend. The one I reference just a few posts down - we stopped communicating around the fall, and then Thanksgiving went, and Christmas hit, and I never called. And I would watch those with that easy give and take of comfort and it would hit me -I don't have a best friend anymore. Not a day-to-day one, as I did. I do have my wonderful best/forever friend, but we've been without each other for so long that our long absences don't phase us. We are just us. It's different when you lose someone that you had almost constantly.

We started reconnecting just this week. I am glad, but not glad at the same time. I have my arm out, keeping this at a distance.

It's interesting -- only in the last three years have I lost friends. Out and out lost them due to either a falling-out or an intentional separation. I've had those I've drifted from, certainly. But, it's a recent thing for me to shut people out. And even if those shutting outs have been for the best, it's still a different hat for me to wear.

Difficult, too.

But the tide ebbs and flows. Things come back even if they go away.

We can't blink.

Two

Oftentimes, I don't write because I think my life is too boring. The mundane, the Congressional politics, the regulations, the endless writing of healthcare specs -- then home, dinner and drink, two grumpy cats, what's on Hulu tonight? Tomorrow let's do it all again. Then I wake and say to myself as I stumble to the bathroom, "when is it going to be too much?" But I shower, make a pot of tea in the kettle of one green tea bag and one english breakfast, put the bagel in the toaster, feed the meowy cat, listening to NPR on my phone the whole time. I wonder when I got so old---NPR and green tea? Really?

I work all day and my TV is on cspan which I watch out of the corner of my eye. The interns run around, laughing, and I remember when I was one of them. I wonder if they know that sometimes I still feel 22? I'm asked important questions and sometimes don't know the answer. Find myself deferring, googling, fast talking, backward stepping.

I took a break for almost two weeks when I went to Kentucky for Christmas. All in all, it was a great trip. I wish I were the type to blog every day -I wish I could update all the time on my thoughts, so I could have that and look back. Instead, I see a blur of baby boys dancing to U2 and doing the cha-cha slide -- I see a five year old girl niece crying to me on the phone because I'm not there to sleep with her that night. I suggested she sleep with her sister instead and she sobbed back "But she doesn't smell the same as you, Aunt Steph."

I see the many glasses of milk I drank. The many, many, many arms of family members I hugged. The conversations held in the dark of night -it is so interesting to hear so many of my family's perspectives on my life. Some think I'm doing some awesome, amazing, thing by being here and others think I'm simply biding my time until I come home and buy a farm.

I have absolutely no idea what I want, almost all of the time. I do know that right now, I don't want to overthink it. I pop the bagel in the toaster, heat the tea, and put one foot in front another.

New Years Eve, I drove back to DC to avoid a winter storm. I drove, ahead of the snow, and thought about how I moved into my apartment on New Years Eve three years ago. I am home. I have another home, two states away.

Growing up, I had another home, two counties away.

I will always be torn. It will always be bittersweet.

To quote the immortal genius of Led Zeppelin...."because you know some times, words have two meanings."

Seems like all of my words do. All my thoughts -all my deepest desires.

Thanks for being here. On to 2013 -on we grow. (Thank you Mel, for this video)

Paradise

She walks down my street with her eyes darting everywhere, absorbing every single detail at impressive speed, inhaling energy from the constant movement and the people. She turns to ask me a question, and I yank her back on the sidewalk as she starts to cross against a Do Not Walk. 

I am the little sister. I'm not the one who is supposed to be looking out for her. I'm not the one who should be living the city life, free and easy as I go. This is her paradise, her energetic eyes jumping here and there.

It wasn't supposed to be me.

She had her first baby at 18, and then two more followed.

But me, the little sister who wrote down the names of the ten children I wanted to have and pictured them all while daydreaming in my closet of the life I was going to have--I got to leave. I walked across the graduation stage, and straight to DC and my life exploded into something else.

I'm not hiding in my closet anymore, throwing a softball in the air, daydreaming, and getting quiet if anyone came in the room to listen for me.

My sister (step-sister, technically) brought up my older nieces and nephew up for Thanksgiving break. We did so much that I don't even know where to start--let's just say there was no museum or monument left unturned and untouched. We never, ever, ever stopped. The kids and I collapsed into our beds and air mattresses each night.

My sister has emotional issues, and veers and swings wildly from happy to sad to pissed to manically ecstatic. I've said it before and I'll say it again...how my nieces and nephew turned out to be such wonderful, balanced kids, I'll never know.

The kids had a blast. All 3 want to move here.

So does she.

She is awed of me, proud of me. She also looks at me with a bit of resentment under her gaze, a little bit of defensiveness. Pride.

It was never supposed to be me that didn't end up on the farm - yet...

She has no idea how long I've plowed this city ground to turn it into a fertile life. No idea of the struggles, no idea of the things unsaid and unmentioned. The tears and blood in your mouth and empty lonely feeling in your stomach when you realize that no one is going to ever rescue you but you. And I can't explain it -- there are some things that you can't tell someone who thinks you have a perfect life. They'll never believe you.

"After all, those were passionate times, when children were pioneers... on the road to find out, wherever that road might take them. When brothers and sisters, looking back... wished they'd known each other better." --The Wonder Years

Me and my niece Carlee; she is the one who will get away.

Veterans Day, Two years ago-

I walked to the Vietnam Wall today -this sounds impressive, until you realize it's less than two miles from my home. I passed many veterans along the way, most about my father's age, and a good deal that were alone. That surprised me.

I tripped, at one point. My foot caught into a hole, and I went down hard on my hand, but didn't completely lose my balance. I thought, wildly, of last November when I was still in a cast. I was swarmed over by many concerned people, but I was luckily fine, and managed to walk another mile and a half home.

I was walking along, and recalled my own words, written in 2010, that are somehow even more appropriate now, today, in 2012 - as my life continues to change and rearrange, and I am working on leaving old scars and hurts behind.

November 11, 2010

I am thinking of Madeline Alice Spohr, who would have been three today.

I am thinking of Henry Louis Granju, a boy whose life touched mine after he left his own.

I am thinking of all the children whose lives never got to be completed, and all the children whose lives are in progress in my life, and how I am learning to parent without ever parenting at all.

I am thinking of the future children in my life on whom I may be able to use all this parenting practice.

I am thinking of my two best friends, one of whom I will spend my Thanksgiving with. Whose hand I will hold before prayer, just as I have for over fifteen years.

And the sweet faces I will hug to me this weekend.

I am thinking of my grandfather, who served in WWII, along with his six brothers. Seven brothers went to war. Seven brothers came home. He wanted me to write a book about him and his brothers--maybe someday, I will. I wish I could have just one more conversation with him.  

So -here's to the veterans of war, the veterans of boot camp, the veterans of immeasurable loss. And here's to the veterans who survived the wars of their own homes, the nightmares of broken dreams and broken families, and to those who came out the other side with a slight limp from suffered hurt.  To those who suffered the wars in their own minds from mental illness, and those who suffered the wars of addiction. I salute you.

We are all survivors of something--veterans of the wars we fight on land, air, sea and our minds.

Here's to them. Here's to us. Let's whisper thank-you to the wind, and hope it reaches someone's ear.

You Don't Own Me

“No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex.” Susan B. Anthony, 1872.