Sometimes my daydreams are interrupted by my inability to move past minor illusory details. For example, with the return of auditions comes the return of daydreams about the Big Job Call, but before I can fully settle into the scene I always get stuck muddling over which location would bring maximum imaginary catharsis—am I at the office for what will become clear is the last time? In the middle of a fabulous party? At home cooking a humble meal, if so what? Does it have a bright array of vegetables, what’s actually in season right now? You see. So lately I have been trying to firmly catalogue certain moments, images of the way my life is as I have always dreamed but been unable to conjure because I couldn’t get the details right.
For a future daydream: the view from my desk looking out of the window. In the immediate foreground, the wrought-iron half cage where my air conditioner lived until last week. To the left, the tree that reaches a story above our third floor: half dead, curled yellow leaves clinging by brittle stems. The sky: blue and pale down at the horizon line, that pallid February color when daylight flashes weakly before yielding back to darkness. Clouds: streaked across like quickly painted snowbanks. Sun: out and bouncing off the tops of the brownstones across the street, bitter cold light, bright and unpenetrating. How shocking it is to step out of the house assuming light will always march forward hand in hand with warmth!
I did not go home for Thanksgiving. My Kentucky holidays often play like a frantic montage: driving, eating, wet kisses from distant family members, heeled boots, more eating, stoned puzzling (that’s a new one), movies, eating again, time collapsing in my childhood bedroom. This year, I stayed in New York and found myself enjoying the discreet scenes of the day: picking up a bouquet in the morning, working at the bookstore during the day, arriving at my friend’s parents’ house at 5:30 and leaving at 9—full but not aching, slightly buzzed from surprise tequila shots, sleepy but not drained.
I did miss my family. When I called my mom I could hear my aunt giggling in the background, Mamaw yelling about the mess Papaw left in the kitchen; it all sounded exactly like it does every year, which is perhaps why I didn’t want to go…There is something about the way time is working now, all at once and at a fever pitch. Everything pummeled between future elation and past grief such that the overlooked present is churned down into fine grains for the hourglass, impossible to keep hold of. When I do not go home it cannot change, it can remain just as I left it: blanket over that arm of the couch, Breaking Dawn on the bedside table, grandparents periodically treading their routine paths of the house like hour-bound cuckoo birds. Home becomes a little mental snow globe I can shake without consequence. It is only with a familiar picture that you can spot the differences. It is only by returning that I am forced to confront the widening gaps.
I am going home tomorrow for a wedding. The first of my friends’ weddings (you’ll recall the infamous bachelorette party). I have never been able to really imagine my wedding, always stuck on one detail or another—will my hair be natural? will I be rich?—but I remember once being adamant about lavender bridesmaid’s dresses when I was eight and made a Maid of Honor pact with my best friend. Who will get married first, who will have a baby first, what will you be when you grow up? All of these sleepover questions are being rapid-fire answered. It’s leading to a whole new set of questions I’m not sure I’m ready to pose let alone satisfy. So many things seem unimaginable, but I imagine not for long.
xx
Mia