Beginning Again

I was not kind to my wife yesterday afternoon.

We had been moving for nearly three weeks by then. It started in Mexico, emptying a storage unit of more than we ever should have kept, giving things away — over and over, for a week — to neighbors, to housekeepers, to the men who worked at the condo complex, to the bartender by the pool, to one of the closest friends we made in our years there. Then six bags and two carryons and two backpacks and a sack of food packed for customs, into Phoenix for four days of meetings and a flood of email I couldn’t answer in the air, into Las Vegas to dig through another storage unit, see old friends, and load a minivan with more than it was built to carry. By yesterday afternoon, I was juggling weighted balls I couldn’t quite hold with grace. None of that is a reason. I was sharp-tongued and short with her, and I am truly sorry. I apologized later. She forgave me faster and more graciously than I deserved, the way she always does. That’s the part of the story I want to tell first, because anything I say after this should be measured against it.

We loaded the van. Michele drove. I tried to work in the passenger seat and mostly looked out the window.

Somewhere on the road, the weight in my shoulders began to loosen. By the time we pulled into the Drury Inn that evening — not extravagant, just decent and warm — I was something I had not been in a long time. A man riding three drink coupons, a plate of rigatoni, and three small conversations with strangers in an elevator who were, for no reason at all, kind.

I think I’m happy.

I keep testing the word like a bone I’m not sure is broken. At sixty-seven, you’re supposed to be winding down, settling in, knowing things. I am winding up. We are creating a home in Castle Rock — not building one, creating one — in rooms that are already there but don’t yet know us. I am laying out a rhythm — writing, creating, working out, taking my supplements in routine, segmenting time for life and business and friendship and art — as if I am twenty-five and have just been handed the keys to my own life for the first time. Maybe that’s exactly what’s happened.

I loved Playa del Carmen. I love it still. Loving where you came from is not a betrayal of where you’re going; it took me a long time to learn that, and I’m not sorry it took as long as it did.

What I know tonight, in a hotel room I’ll forget the number of by next week, is this: the becoming is not behind me. The home is not yet ours. The rhythm is not set. My wife is asleep beside me and I owe her better afternoons than the one I gave her yesterday, and I intend to give them.

Tomorrow we drive north.

—sh