Same Time, This Year

This year was going to be different.

This year she was prepared, over the summer had told several of her friends how September always caught her by surprise, how each year it would take two or three weeks to figure out what was making her restless, distracted, what it was filling her with free-floating yearnings, unattached poignancy. The yellower light in the middle of the day, the smell of distant wildfires on the breeze, the curious mix of cool and warm in the air when it stood still—these changes always seemed to come all at once, arriving as a single sudden thing, a personality, and so she knew that this year, expecting it as she was, eyes wide open and chin up, it would not ambush her, would not tap her on the shoulder and then, when she turned with a smile to see what friend was waiting, knock her off her feet with its full-face punch.

It would mark a real watershed in her life, this taking control of her emotions like this. It would be the first time since his death that she would enter the anniversary of those two terminal months with the kind of awareness of those healing, if not quite of “those healed.”

About time! Nine years out…

Over the weekend the brushfire farther inland had crept closer to the shore, nearer to her town, but still far enough away to be an item in the news, something to follow rather than something to run from. All through the day on Saturday, she watched the sky draw the heavy gray-yellow smoke of the fire over itself like a blanket, even and thick and flat, the clear high blue swallowed up bit by bit until only a thin bright strip at the ocean’s horizon was left.

Well, sure the light is yellow—there’s a fire! What would you expect?

Sunday distracted her with its bustle: for such a small congregation, it was a busy one. First the morning service, then the afternoon with its talk and plans and writing and eating, and the evening service of chant-like music and meditation. It was night before she looked up and out at the sky again. A night sky clear—what happened to the smoke?—and star-bright with crackling dryness.

She was tired—it would be good to get home.

Monday dawned yellow again, no real smoke cover, but drifting ash had snowed during the night, and the space between earth and sky was still colored by it. Her car hunched in the driveway looking ashamed, shiny silver and gleaming glass dulled by a thin, patchy layer of flat white ash and dark gray shards of burnt brush, acre upon acre of desert growth wondrously reduced to these pitiful remnants.

Thank goodness I left the windows up last night.

And the temperature was … very nice. Balmy and still, and tendrils of cool pooled against her calves and arms as she walked through them from her car to the cottage that served as her office, parting them like vines in a forest, feeling them close again behind her, pulled in against her back in her wake.

She was the first to arrive, and pushed open the door into the quiet dimness of the building’s interior, reluctantly flicking on lights and firing up computers and the big copier that hummed and heated and hiccupped its way through their days. The clatter as it woke itself, exercising its sorting bins and stretching its mysterious innards, evaporated the last shreds of not-yet-at-work peace, so she turned from watching its ritual to make her way toward the kitchen and the coffee pot. “No one makes it as good as you do”, they always said. She believed them sincere, even though it was just water and coffee grounds—how hard can that be?—but she still teased back with the accusation that it was just a plot to ensure that by the time the others arrived the coffee would be ready for the day’s first hit of the only stimulant drug still legal and readily available.

One by one they swirled in the front door, each one bringing a new level of complexity, the entrance of another instrument in the symphony, the unique timbre of a different voice, and soon the day had well and truly begun and no going back into morning dreaminess.

It was a good harness, fitted well to her, with no scratchy bits and few tight places, and she was grateful for what it brought to her life: the piquant pleasures of a happy, motley team, sporadic opportunities to shine, and a surprising degree of camaraderie, an unexpected belonging.

Almost like those days building the company with him…

The morning passed quickly, lunchtime rushed in on her and brought with it the insistent list of chores, tugging at her sleeve and prodding her in the back. She grabbed her purse and her list and her sunglasses. A quick “be back as soon as I can,” and she was out the door.

Oh my god…

There it was. The whole package: the green of tree and bush transformed into a warm olive color, the luxurious-bath feel of the air silky against her skin, and that smell, instantly drying her throat and filling her nostrils with the scent of nine years of loss.

Her stomach lurched, her breath caught in her throat, and her chest tightened against the swelling of her heart, swelling with restlessness, with denial, with goddamned hope. Her eyes stung with more than smoke, and she felt her soul searching again—always again—for the way, for some way, for any way back to the moment, that undefined, indefinable moment before the path split, before it was too late, when it would still have been possible to do something about it all, prevent it, mitigate it. Run from it. Searching like a lost pet searches for its owner, that can’t understand why, doesn’t even try, but only searches for what it needs, circling in its safe cage—its trap, oblivious to the ministrations of its rescuers, insensible to any other place than “home”.

She stood in the middle of the tiny parking lot, lunch traffic whizzing by her in the street, sunglasses dangling forgotten from a nerveless hand, and tried to catch her balance, undecided, again and eternally, despite all her careful, deliberate preparations, whether she wanted to go forward or backward.