CAN’T ALIGHT

Alight:    (verb);    an adverbial of place,  with no object;   to get off a vehicle of some sort

This will pass, but it’s a strange feeling.    I’m home, so I’ve had a “homecoming,”   and I’m appropriately filled with gratitude and mild surprise that all went well.      But deep inside,  I haven’t “arrived.”

I can’t  “alight”  from my vehicle that has held me for the past two and a half weeks.

I am floating around my home as though I’m a ghost,  seeing, but not quite belonging.

I’m at the age where I can easily imagine leaving this world,  leaving my home for good,  and yet curious about what will happen to this house.  What would it look like when I’m no longer living . . .  here?

It would look like this, like it does now.    With me,  close by, looking down and around, but  not quite dwelling in it.    “I” will not be here,  but this house will still stand.

The reason may be that I’ve been doing the same things that I did when I was in “travel mode” and getting ready to leave for my trip.   I seem to be washing and arranging the same clothes that I had gotten ready for the trip, only now putting them back into their closets and drawers,  not in suitcases.

I’m looking through old mail, paying bills, throwing away junk mail and catalogs,  just as I did right before I left.

I’m still eating  from an almost empty refrigerator with “travel food”  yet to finish. Familiar food of  the past couple of weeks.

Still cleaning and organizing the car, as I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks.

For Pete’s sake:  I’m still watching a hurricane threatening our coastlines!

My reality is still . . .  traveling.

So what am I?    Am I the body now living in this house?   Or am I my mind,   still alert and oriented to my car?

It’s my birthday month right now, and I have to renew my driver’s license –  inside a Secretary of State office   I went there today,,  traveled a bit to get to a smaller office at what I thought was a good time of day;   took a number and realized there were thirty numbers ahead of me!

As I sat there I thought this may take  2 1/2 hours for my turn.  No, actually,  it would be  about 200 miles worth of driving.  Enough to drive out of one state and get halfway into the next.    That’s a big waste of time, just sitting there, getting nowhere.

I left the building.

I’m me,  in my mind,   but I haven’t yet come to terms with the ups and downs of everyday living.   Being here, not getting here.    I can’t put together the physical reality of being home and the mental reality of getting home.

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So who is me?

Where am I?

And what am I?

 

It’ll come back to me soon.