Boise run 10/09

There was a time when I made the Boise run and it was filled with adventure. There was a time when I would go down the road with a pad and pencil by my side, ready to jot down imagery at seventy miles an hour just so I could plug it into a letter to you once I hit the Meridian library or got back home. There was a time when I felt powerful, indignant, villified, somewhat unhinged by all the drama that those rides represented.

It was a heady time, those days when I would take to the road in that old Honda wagon of mine in search of my family and my reeling mind and my ragged heart. Those were the days when I was told to fill up the car with things that everyone on that end needed. Those were the days when I was told to bring the kid's clothes and their toys and books and bedding. Slowly but surely I drained the life blood out of this house and replaced it with some sort of alternative universe that only I knew about and could understand and was willing to deal with.

There was a time when I made that thousand mile run and it was a pleasure of sorts. I would take the trip and fill it full of stops, packed it full of second handing and road food and visions. I remember all too well all the times I pulled to the side of the road just to talk to you. There was a time when I couldn't get too far outside of La Grande before I had to stop, for if I didn't I wouldn't find reception, couldn't hear your words, feel your voice, until I hit Boise or Pendleton. There was a time when I would spend the night before my run not only cleaning the house but writing a poem or a long letter to you. Sometimes those words, that effort, just flamed our ardor, sometimes they just amplified our loneliness and added to the craziness of our lives.

There was a time when I would take those drives just so I could get back home again to you. There was always that longing for you that went along with the drive that made those trips bittersweet. Sure, I loved those trips if only because I could do that strange and wonderful absentee dad dance, but those trips were also augmented with library runs with the kids so I could email you, or with trips to the market for those quick and daring phone calls to you, or with outings that I could relate back to you, like birding with the kids at the Snake River on Christmas Eve or finding cookbooks at Savers and such. On those trips I did things that I thought we would all like to do, and sometimes, in the relating, you found yourself there, right alongside us, too.

There was a time when I went away only so I could come back home to you.

Now, all that has changed.

I go to Boise these days with the knowledge that to go means field work, means investigation, means getting a lay of the land. Going now means looking for employment, means scoping out new neighborhoods, means looking for that next best place to live. Going on the road to Boise means finding someone to watch the cat, means finding someone to keep an eye on the house. Going now means coming home to a light burning, to an email box full of job information. Going now has none of the thrill of those other trips outside of the joy and pleasure of seeing my children. Going now is filled with the knowledge that time and chances and opportunities have been squandered, knowing that my family has come and gone and that all too much has changed between my Estranged One and me. Going now means endless miles of music and scratched notes and money spent to no end other than to have a good time and up-to-date information about the road and to have filler for that set aside novel of mine.

Going now means leaving only to return home to prepare to go back again.

Somehow I need to stop the coming and going and just stay somewhere meaningful for awhile.

There was a time when I would be here writing these things for you, and now I write them to you, but it is the world who is bringing them to your doorstep, not me. There was a time when I set up an email box for you and you told me that you were happy to finally have one of your very own. There was a time, at the end of those long and lonesome road trips, where I would have volumes of things to say to you packed in my head and know, when I finally got those words down that they those words would take wing and inflame your heart and imagination because those words would alight in your email box, words and imaginings were meant just for you. There was a time when those volumes of words, those tales of love and longing and loneliness would spark your imagination, would let you know that those road trips were taken, not just with a car load of bedding and toys and cookbooks and cassettes, but with you by my side.

There was time when we loved. There was a time when you meant the world to me and that time Jane, well, it's still here.

I leave in the morning and know that when I do my words will take wing and fly back home to you. These words of mine are still yours, my dear, as is my heart.

Take care.

Your WHMB