Sunset Salads

It is the middle of August.  The summer is slipping past me, too fast.  I can't hold on to it.  It's over before it's over.  A particularly cold and wet week - the week I am OFF work - gives us a preview of fall.  It gives us time to be cozy, to sleep late, clean the house, bake cookies.  We even went shopping for school supplies and fall clothes, before November this year!  But really, I would take a messy house and be ill-prepared for back-to-school for cheerful, sunny days. 

I can`t say that we haven`t had our share of sunny days this summer.  We have been swimming and eating our dinners outside.  Almost every evening, we take our salad to the second floor balcony and eat watching the sunset.  Every night, we go to bed too late.

Despite summer slipping by fast, the world seems to tilt slowly on its axis.  My father`s torn leg muscle has covered our summer in a blanket of slowness, reflecting the slowness of his movement and his progress. So slow that he wonders what is going on and has asked his doctor to do an x-ray.  The results are slow to come in.  We have spent slow-moving visits at my parents` apartment, talking and arguing, providing company and not much help.  Hoping to see improvement.  Then being happy to leave.

My father`s leg has taken my mind off, ever so slightly, of my own health.  Yet, I notice subtle differences in myself.  I feel ... changed.  I have difficulty relating to the world.  I have lost interest in certain things, it seems, permanently.  I sometimes feel impatient.  I sometimes don't understand and feel that others don`t understand.  How can they?  It doesn`t mean anything, except that I sometimes feel alone. 

I have been less scared.  Though I still replay the events over and over in my head, it is less often.  Though I still have he same symptoms repeating, they are less severe.  The experience is fading, somewhat, in my memory.

Yet, sometimes, I will react to things in a way people don`t understand.  The cleaning lady comes at a different hour than the one that we agreed on, and I realize that Aveen has been at home, enveloped in the fumes of cleaning supplies, for over an hour.  I am panicked and angry and get Aveen out of the house urgently. 

No one understands why.

I am kept waiting for dinner.  And I don't eat until late.  And it makes me too full, and I can`t sleep that night.  I lie awake, and everything hits me.  And I wonder how I could have spent the day not scared.  At dawn, I finally sleep for a couple of hours.  And when the sun comes up, things are less dramatic and I wish I could have just let myself sleep.

But.  The memory is fading.  Ever so slowly.  But fading.  Like the sunset.  The memory is fading into darkness. 

Moving on is a slow and gradual process.  Little by little, new experiences replace older ones.

And I have sunrise to look forward to.  And a new day.