I usually drive

I had forgotten what it is like to be the passenger, at the mercy of someone else's whims. For almost 30 years, I've been the driver at least part of the way. 

A car trip that is supposed to have taken 2 hours is now into its third and I feel a bit like I've been kidnapped by a well intentioned, overly wound new driver. Apparently, we need to get pet food. Why this has to happen today, I can't say.  I try not to steep in exasperation.  

I came very close to changing flights to fly back tonight or very early tomorrow morning, mainly because the realisation that I am dangerously close to being in perpetual motion sent a shiver of past lives through me. But I didn't, so now I am Shanghai'd in a hypermarket parking garage somewhere on the Peninsula near Oslo, trying to curb my impatience. 

2018 and early 2020 were blurs. So much movement.  And I feel weirdly bereft with out my kids, even though I know I needed to break, needed time to miss them, for them to know they can survive without me. 

It doesn't help that I am also 5 weeks into a mastitis situation, something that apparently also plagued my paternal grandmother, that wildflower who used to sit low in the tree line and shoot at people she thought might be stealing her mail.  It's almost a year since she died and I miss her. Monday, I'll be at the breast clinic, then back to the airport unless I panic and change my mind, again. I could leave until September, when the kids are back in school, just about. But it would be cutting it close to the edge and I don't like the odds.

It's  been  year since I cleared out my parents' house, numb with confusion, guilt, anger, and heartache.  I mean, it was also a darkly funny summer, but I think I may still be a bit addled, certainly being confronted with other people who are as close to their parents as I was to mine is upsetting, unsettling. I breathe through the envy and the loneliness, take joy in their stories and dynamics.  My parents did right by me, in so many ways.  But today, I feel a bit lost, tether-less. Like I've astrally projected and someone has cut my cord. 

Or maybe I just need a nap, since I feel not unlike an overtired child.