Soft Air

It was good to see my parents over the holiday, even though I worry about my mom's posture and my dad's driving and I live alone so much of the time that I felt overwhelmed by their attention. It is soothing to be around people who care for you, and to be surrounded by beings that are safe to touch and be touched by. You might assume, solitary as my life tends to be, that this is because I don't like being around people. If you saw me flinching from the touch of a stranger, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that I don't like being touched. Both are wrong; I love being surrounded by doting kin and cuddles and hugs and tickles and all that sort of thing -- but I have to trust those surrounding me and touching me.

So it was good to be among people I trust and love; not that I do not have such people where I live here, but I don't live with them, hear them breathing in the next room, feel the warmth on a chair where they sat, and so on. It's all so distant and formal, even among good friends. I don't believe in taking people for granted, but it's nice to believe that one could if one wished.

It was interesting being back in the Pacific Northwest. It's easy to forget the pervasiveness of wet, the omnipresence of moisture, the ever-present squelch of damp and soggy and puddled. It creeps into your very marrow, chilling you along the spine and lower back, in a way that cold dry air somehow does not. To a child who grew up in the arid West, the essence of water remains foreign and mysterious. Yet it is soothing too; the smell of damp leaves, the sound of dripping water, the feel of moisture on your skin complement the soft greyness of the air to make you aware of your range of senses. In such an environment, the slow gathering of leaves by hand becomes a moving meditation, a journey through the world of the small and groundlevel, a scent symphony of wet earth and plants punctuated by the visual burst of green leaf against dark soil.

Returning to the southland with my senses heightened, I revel in the softness of the late fall afternoon, the golden air gentle as a flannel sheet on a cold dark morning. I pet the neighbor's cat, toast some bread and look forward to a long walk as dusk settles in and mourning doves croon an evening lullaby. Instant nostalgia, I sometimes call it, this feeling of time suspended in amber, drifting, glowing, warm.