I left on 12/12.  I just realized that.  That’s a fun date for lots of reasons.  “It’s your 12 Days of Christmas” someone said.  And today, Santa needs to bring me a truck.  I’m once again pouring over Craigslist after pouring some coffee.  Me on my laptop and William on his cell.  We go look at one that’s a manual.  “You know how to drive one of these, little lady?”  the dealer asks me.  I prefer it.  The first car I bought had a stick shift.  In Driver’s Ed I got stuck in an intersection on Main Street and all I could do was watch the lights change while I unsuccessfully tried to change gears.  I knew that if I owned it, then I would have to learn.  I hated that there was something I couldn’t do.  And now that I think about it, I’m at the same point in my life again now.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out with Frosting.  Not that he wasn’t also a  version of a manual transmission, but maybe eventually I would’ve felt like I didn’t do this thing that I deep down wanted to do.  I wanted him, but maybe I wanted this just a little bit more.  I’m trying to make peace with that; find peace in that.

I’m on Lido Key – the first time I’ve been to the beach and I’ve been here 5 days!   As I walk the beach picking up shells and watching the sun set, the most relaxed I’ve felt in days, my RV salesman calls to say the tow rating on that truck isn’t enough to pull my trailer.  I ponder this as waves splash up between and around my legs, and I pause this to take a photo just as a pelican takes flight.  I appreciate it and I let it all go as I enter the solstice drum circle.  It’s December 21st and my toes are in the sand.  The energy of it feels warm too and I feel my mind and body sway to it all.  They know how to let go.  They’ve been trained.  We send up lit paper lanterns and the leader tells us to think of someone who needs our love and light right now and Stride comes to mind.  He’s under the same sky that I’m looking up at.  I wonder how his surgery went.  “Sweet healing sleep, Stride” I texted him, “C u in your dreams.”

On my way home I get a text back, “Thanks Shawna.  Send drugs.”  I’d love to be his naughty nurse.  I question, for the first time, the timing of all this.  I call Caramom and Toad after I get back to the ranch and fill them in.   I send them pics of the camper and they ooo and aahh.  “Does it have an oven?” Cara asks.  Because I was so insistent back when I was talking about it in Wisconsin that I might want to bake muffins.  She too told me as we swayed on her porch swing, not to compromise.  To be smart and to get what I wanted to feel comfortable.  You’re not just camping, this is your home she offered me. She asks about Stride.  Wednesday night before the house closed on Friday, her, Toad, Casey and Jeff and I had my last supper request: Mama Mia’s pizza and she asked me how I was going to say good bye to him.  “Just slap him on the ass and ride off into the sunset?”  “Something like that,” I answered.  I filled them in on how it didn’t exactly go like that.  The blizzard delay and me praying that Saturday morning after our last night together because I couldn’t find the words.  “Are you leaving?”  he says hesitantly, bringing me coffee.  I’m balancing on the arm of the couch but I make myself slide and sit down.  I guess prayer sometimes gives someone else the words when you can’t.  “I think so,” I say.  “Were you even going to tell me?”  “I was trying.  Last night I woke up in either a panic of ‘holy shit what have I done’ or a beautiful peace.  It was a roller coaster of a night,” I say.  “It was a great night,” says he.  It was a great night.  And I didn’t want to spoil it.  There were various moments when I could’ve said something, it was on the tip of my tongue.  But I was also in a cloud of denial brought on by absinthe.  Maybe more than a little selfish.  And now, the time has come.  I try to explain why….the weather, the Midwest, the weather, the need for something different and following my heart.  “If you’re going to Colorado or California, I’m following you!”  he declares.  I’m not really sure where I’m going I tell him.  He says I’ve given him lots to think about.  I apologize, “I tend to be disruptive.  Some people find it annoying.”  He declares again, “I don’t.”

He should be studying.  I should already be gone.  But here we both are, delayed by snow and talking about this and we end up going back to his bed and making love.  I will miss this.  This thing that I didn’t think would be anything that I now can’t find a way to walk away.  “I don’t think I’ll see him again,” I tell Sara at the High Rock after I’d had what I thought was a one night stand.  She’s eating dinner and living vicariously through my description of my little tryst and I’m sipping a martini.  “He was a rebound guy.  I needed a palate cleanser,” I said.  “I think you should see him again.  He sounds nice,” she tells me.  “I do have some time to kill until the house sells,” I say, thoughtfully, “hmmm, maybe I should.”

That was October 24th.  And then it was December 10th.  And then it’s the night of the 11th and we’re standing in the snow and he’s squeezing the sides of my waist through my puffer jacket and telling me he wants to come visit me.  That he wants me in his life, “so don’t go changing your number.”  That he’s put stuff on Craigslist and that I’ve inspired him.  He’s always thought he had to have it all figured out but here I am, just following my happiness and trusting it will all work out.  He can transfer credits, he can put grad school on hold.  “Have you told him that he should take some time to consider all this and apply for schools and get his options lined up for his doctorate…?”  Cara asks presently.  “Someone should probably have that conversation with him,” I agree, “but it’s not gonna be me.”  I’m over here on the limb coaxing him with fruit.  We talk about naming my camper Frida Kahlo after this strong, independent Mexican artist know for her self-portraits; “because I am the subject I know best.”   Her art was described as a “ribbon around a bomb.”

Rich was my late summer lover.  Joey heated my autumnal fire.  I wonder what the winter solstice will bring…