Febuary 20, 2014

It was the lightning that woke me, not the thunder. Someone is taking your picture, said the dream brain. Ayla came into the room upset and went to her father. She has always gone to her father for comfort in the night. From the time she was two until the time she was four, she would wake up once every night and go to her dad, who would get up and lift her and put her back to bed. That was all she wanted. I don't remember him every getting mad. He said he knew it wouldn't last forever. He was right.

At work I was approached by an older man who appeared to be kind and harmless. Then he wanted to know my last name. Despite the fact that he could look it up--I'm a county employee--I didn't give it to him. It creeps me out that this town is so small people can recognize my car and know where I live. The man invited me to church. "You have to be careful," I told Noah this morning. "Someone can seem really nice at first and then just invite you to church."

Today is an odd day. It smells like the sea. It's warm and wet and I feel like I live in some sleepy beach town, with wind battered shutters and a stormy pier. I don't know. We are frustrated. It is a season of frustrations. All unbloggable. Our saddles are full of burrs.

Yesterday I got off work and you could tell it was going to be spring. I took a route I usually don't, one that winds through the neighborhood Noah and I cruised in May 2012, when we were visiting Brevard for the first time. I thought about myself then, looking at the rolling lawns, the unfenced yards, the untidy forest laced throughout the houses. The way I envisioned our lives here, full of Southern tropes like rocking chairs and record players. I couldn't reconcile the past me with the now me. Every year a part of me thinks that spring isn't going to return. I think that's why I nearly cry on the first day we can sense it coming. Everything seems impossible until it happens.