Needs Updating
You know how you get those notices that it's time to download an update to your computer software? Sometimes I wish there was a way to update my psyche.
On Sunday evening, I was coming back from the grocery store (because you know how much I love the grocery store. I thought I'd go on the last night of Winter Break before school started the next day. That seemed like a really good idea. Ack --words cannot describe the agony.) and the sky was as dark as my black mood.
For my birthday, my husband had given me the new Indigo Girls CD called, "Retrospective" which is sort of a greatest hits collection but has two new songs on it. One of them, "Leaving," came on as I was driving home. (It's too new for a YouTube clip, I think, but you can listen to a clip from it here.)
But do you ever wonder through and through who's that person standing next to you
And after all the nights apart is there a home for a traveling heart
But if I weren't leaving you I don't know what I'd do
But the more I go the less I know will the fire still burn on my return
To keep the path lit on the only road I know
Honey, all I know to do is go
Anyway, I was sitting at a traffic light and thinking dark thoughts and thinking how "all I know is go" and I started to laugh.
Because here's the thing: in my reckless and wild youth, I used to end relationships and friendships and other ships prematurely, always filled with a sense that I'd like to leave the party before someone asked me to leave. Honestly, I'd convinced myself that I was a commitment-phobe and that I was destined to grow old and alone and bitter because I would never be able to cure my restless heart. I still have that feeling --that sense that I'm a dark, dark, lonely soul, a slave to my own wanderlust and craving for solitude.
Except, well, as I was sitting there and the heavens began to fall in wet clumps of snow and ice, I realized that:
I am a 44 year old woman.
Driving a mini-van which was filled with food to make a week's worth of lunches for my two daughters, one of whom will soon be eleven years old.
And that I was driving back to my house on the hill -- the lights were beckoning and the fireplace cheerfully ablaze-- to my partner of the last thirteen years with whom I am still madly in love.
And that actually? All I really know is how to STAY.
Yup. The psyche ought to receive some sort of periodic updates. Maybe Bill Gates could get to work on that.
On Sunday evening, I was coming back from the grocery store (because you know how much I love the grocery store. I thought I'd go on the last night of Winter Break before school started the next day. That seemed like a really good idea. Ack --words cannot describe the agony.) and the sky was as dark as my black mood.
For my birthday, my husband had given me the new Indigo Girls CD called, "Retrospective" which is sort of a greatest hits collection but has two new songs on it. One of them, "Leaving," came on as I was driving home. (It's too new for a YouTube clip, I think, but you can listen to a clip from it here.)
But do you ever wonder through and through who's that person standing next to you
And after all the nights apart is there a home for a traveling heart
But if I weren't leaving you I don't know what I'd do
But the more I go the less I know will the fire still burn on my return
To keep the path lit on the only road I know
Honey, all I know to do is go
Anyway, I was sitting at a traffic light and thinking dark thoughts and thinking how "all I know is go" and I started to laugh.
Because here's the thing: in my reckless and wild youth, I used to end relationships and friendships and other ships prematurely, always filled with a sense that I'd like to leave the party before someone asked me to leave. Honestly, I'd convinced myself that I was a commitment-phobe and that I was destined to grow old and alone and bitter because I would never be able to cure my restless heart. I still have that feeling --that sense that I'm a dark, dark, lonely soul, a slave to my own wanderlust and craving for solitude.
Except, well, as I was sitting there and the heavens began to fall in wet clumps of snow and ice, I realized that:
I am a 44 year old woman.
Driving a mini-van which was filled with food to make a week's worth of lunches for my two daughters, one of whom will soon be eleven years old.
And that I was driving back to my house on the hill -- the lights were beckoning and the fireplace cheerfully ablaze-- to my partner of the last thirteen years with whom I am still madly in love.
And that actually? All I really know is how to STAY.
Yup. The psyche ought to receive some sort of periodic updates. Maybe Bill Gates could get to work on that.
Comments
You said it beautifully.
We know.
Very nice post.
Welcome to 44. And ps - Retrospective, and Leaving, are among my very favorites, too.