When you're dreaming with a broken heart The waking up is the hardest part You roll out of bed and down on your knees And for a moment, you can hardly breathe
Wondering, "Was she really here? Is she standing in my room?" No, she's not 'Cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone
-John Mayer
Rumbling outside, with thunderstorms popping up to the south just like yesterday.
But today's not just like yesterday. P was here yesterday. Now it's just me in this big empty space.
No one is here to make a face at me when I try to don one of my classic Zippy the Pinhead t-shirts, so here I sit in one of my favorites.
You probably can't read his dadaist musing, "All life is a blur of Republicans and meat." That'll turn some heads in the checkout line at Winn Dixie.
I had planned to work on work this morning, after setting aside most of yesterday to spend with Peg before she left. We cleaned up the boat for a ride out into the murky Gulf at Keaton Beach, then changed our minds when we heard those thunderstorm rumblings I mentioned. We sat in the plastic pool and drank a pitcher of margaritas. We played nine holes of golf. We (well, she) painted an old end table Peg plans to return to 407. We made one last sweep through the Elks Lodge for supper and a hug from Dot.
Then this morning arrived, and not even a half hour after rolling out of bed I watched P drive away, not to return to this sacred space until after Labor Day.
After pulling on Zippy and an old pair of Boy Scout shorts (not sure where those came from, given that I was never a Boy Scout. I'm guessing they must've been Sean's once) I soaked myself emptying the pool and dragging the saggy mass of blue plastic into the back of the truck. Then I checked to see if the leg to that end table I glued together yesterday stayed joined.
It didn't, and so I found myself trying to figure out how to glue and bind it under pressure during the week I'll be away.
That's quite a still life, as I look at it, a tableau of our life here. The leg's propped up at one end with a box of remote office supplies and the Pinnacle golf balls I bought last week at the club, giving just the right angle and pressure at the bottom of the leg. There's a box of 12 gauge shotgun shells that wasn't quite heavy enough to press down on the glued fracture, so instead it's being weighted with the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. And of course there are briefcases and litigation bags strewn about. Always.
Having set the patient's leg, I ventured out in the searing heat to sand and put a little more paint on Peg's table top.
I ran out of paint, so that'll just have to do.
I probably ought to go ahead and bring in those cushions, because, well, it's just me sitting out here in the middle of eighty acres of complete solitude.
I had almost forgotten that fact, almost convinced myself I'd heard the screen door slam outside as a harbinger of P walking across the dog run to the office so I could sample some pimento cheese she'd just made, or share her ideas for how one day she'll paint the living room.
But she won't, because she's gone, driving across the pine bottoms of south Georgia on the way to her first stop in Roanoke, Virginia a little after six tonight.
The plan right now is for me to fly up mid-afternoon and meet her for supper there, then back to Panama tomorrow to work on a brief and get ready for another extremely busy week.
But those damned rumblings outside. Hard to say if I'll be able to fly anywhere by this afternoon. Maybe I should leave a little early, try to beat the weather, and just work in the hotel room in Roanoke.
Which all leaves me feeling a little ambivalent. I love Wyldswood, but it's not Wyldswood without Peggy Wylds. And for maybe obvious reasons I feel her absence more acutely here than at the condo or in the office over in PC.
Yep, I think I'll do whatever I still need to do here--there's laundry in the washing machine, and dishes in the draining rack that need to be put away--then drop off our trash at the solid waste disposal facility and head over to the airport.
It's already howling outside as a downdraft races through the trees. Hope I didn't wait too long.
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