Ephemera

So, I’m sitting with Dotty in our favorite coffee shop.  We have met here a couple of times a week to work.  But this is our last time, and I’m trying not to cry but the tears are on the surface.  I'm trying to keep them from falling.  Cherry blossoms clutching the branch.



Dotty no longer has wifi because she packed her router.  The last couple of days I was with my dad, he no longer had wifi, because my mom had packed her router, so I can’t help but see a parallel.

I guess life is moving on.  I know I’m not stuck.  Unlike Dotty, I have a great job in the city, and Dotty only left because she had a really lousy job and her new job will be great (and this is a wonderful adventure for her, and she thinks she’ll come back in 2 years--god I hope so!).  But it does seem that people come to the city to be young, and everyone our age is leaving, except me. It feels like people are growing up, growing older, settling down, and leaving me behind.  The city is for the young or the rich, and we’re not either.  (Now, I should say, I have a great home, which I own, when none of my friends have ever managed to pull off in the city, and a great job, with health insurance and a pension, so it isn’t exactly like I’m this perpetual adolescent and all my friends are growing up--most of my friends would love the situation I have.  Two of my close friends are living with their parents and they talk about coming back to the city when their finances stabilize.  So my feeling doesn’t exactly match the objective reality.  But it still feels that way.)

The undercurrent with my dad is that I hate losing a year or two with him, while he figures this out, because I don't know how many years he has left.  I hate losing a couple of years with Dotty because, honestly, in 4 years, I intend to have children, and so we only have a few years left and single gals in the city.  I want to travel as much as I can right now, because I'm aware of not having much time left.  (Yes, I could travel with kids, but it would be a lot harder.)

Van Gogh painted this, his, in my opinion, most beautiful painting, right before he killed himself.  How could he despair when he saw such beauty?

The table next to us is filled with 6 lovely, older, Japanese women.  They don't speak English, but they are very sweet.  They are enjoying rice balls and oranges and I'm reminded of cherry blossoms and how quickly life goes.  Obviously, I need to climb out of this funk and not just numb myself out for the next 2 years.  I want to clutch to this moment and not let the blossom fall.