The Sopping Tuesday/No Longer, Not Yet/ The Past and Pending

 (With apologies to Edward Gorey...)

It's a dismal anniversary, damp and melancholy, not unlike the day it commemorates. It was the 8th of May, 11 years ago now, when a low rumble of thunder got my attention. The heavy sky outside my window brought on a vague panic; I'd forgotten how dark the hill country could be when it rained. 

I shuddered, a bone-deep sort of spasm. I wanted to wail out loud, because how could I hide from the weather? But there was nothing for it. Instead of wailing, I got in the car and drove to the elementary school where I registered one of my children for classes; the next day at the junior high I would register another. The littlest one, I could still carry on my hip, just barely. I remember pulling into the parking lot and having to sit for a moment to catch my breath, because it had been so long since I'd done anything without my husband that I wondered if I'd forgotten how. I remember seeing the gold-green live oak catkins scattered on the damp asphalt like runes. I was not versed in reading them, but I already knew they said, "you don't want to be here." 

The next day, it was still pouring as I sat at the glassed-in office at the junior high on the hill, filling out paperwork while the pledge of allegiance echoed down the hall. It felt so strange, looking out on the silvery world on the other side of the glass. Vertiginous, like I might fall. Last month, last week, even, we'd been living our old lives somewhere else, and now we were here. 

My black ballet flats were soaked through from the run-off, so after I'd left my teen to his classes, I'd gathered my toddler and gone to Walgreen's for a cheap pair of sandals and a bottle of Excedrin Migraine. I remember our reflections in the doorway glass, the sky behind us, the rainwater rushing down the gutters even as the clouds were beginning to break. I remember how I sought comfort in the drugstore's sameness, how it reminded me of Victoria, soothing my homesickness for moment, even though I knew I was fooling myself. I even remember feeling a little weird about buying the sandals, too, as if by purchasing new shoes, it would mean I was somehow betraying my old self, that it would be the beginning of the end of who I was before I came. But when the sandals were worn out by the end of the summer, I found I hesitated just as much when it came time to throw them away. 

I went to back to Victoria for a visit a couple of months ago. I hadn't been there in a long time. It was equal parts more decrepit and yet also somehow revitalized. My family never had much interest in returning, so it was my friend who drove me south. He wanted to see the place I'd written about, the inspiration for the name at the top of this page. He wanted to know the "infernal geometry of the streets", the unnaturally silent corners, the haunting sense of being in a place that felt like no place much at all.

We sat on a bench downtown and drew sketches in our notebooks and listened to the clicking of the crosswalk lights. We watched the eerie shimmer in the intersection of N. Main and Santa Rosa while the palm fronds rattled in the silence.

We explored the places on the map I'd once made, climbed to the top of an abandoned parking garage where we found mysterious signs and wonders. We rested, hot and tired, as we watched cloud shapes drifting by. 

And all along I had the unnerving sense that I could just go home, as if I'd only gone for a long walk in the sunny afternoon, or just popped out to pick up lunch, like I'd done so often. As if the landscape of my life had not irrevocably changed. As if I could just walk back to the gold house (now painted blue), as if my children would be there, still children, and not nearly all of them grown up now. 

That's when I knew for sure that - in my mind, anyway - I'd never really left. That part of me (my heart, soul, psyche?) had remained there all along. Life on pause, transition incomplete. Those worn-out shoes I didn't want to toss. Unlike the rest of my family, I'd never really made the leap. 

Maybe that was my way of surviving. Perhaps, perhaps. But it's way past time now to collect those parts of myself and go. The life I lived in Victoria and the quasi-suspended-in-transition existence that came after. I'm tired of dismal Tuesdays and dread at the sound of thunder. Finally, at last, I have a new key.

The hex of the past is unwoven. Maybe one day I'll even remember it fondly. For now, though, I must turn my attention to that which is pending, and for the time when not yet is no longer.