Back Aches and Memories

The weather is lovely right now in New York. Inside the City, it's just the few of us who didn't go out of town and a slew of tourists running wild in the cleaned up, spiffed up borough of Manhattan. I remember apartment sitting for my brother and sister in law in the Wall Street district ten years ago this very weekend. The girls and I watched the organism of tourists going up and down the street headed for Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty. Every other sign of life was gone. Very eerie. I was resigned to their black leather couch. My back was morbidly wrenched from three sublet moves. I took Ibuprofen like an addict. That's the night I heard Princess Diana had died. I laid there in pain, and everything was surreal.

But I had my girls and we were planted in a new World. Ten years later, the younger one is packing to return to school. In a week, I'll be sitting here posting, alone. Weird. I've been alone plenty since she went away a year ago but now my older girl is in a sublet of her own.

Everything changes. I have one month left of my sabbatical. I'm going to work it, girl. Nothing else left to do. I believed decades ago in the following quotation by Wassily Kandinsky and I breathe it now:

"I value only those artists who really are artists, that is, who consciously or unconsciously, in an entirely original form, embody the expression of their inner life; who work only for this end and cannot work otherwise."

Last night Sarah, Lexie (her friend from school) and I went to Coney Island. It was grand fun. I was aghast that it was my first time except for a trip to the Aquarium way back at the beginning of our journey. We rode the Wonder Wheel and they laughed at me, a big chicken. Then I watched them on the Himalaya. Took me back to when my girls were little and we'd go to Western Playland in El Paso and ride the Himalaya.

I stood there watching them go around, blips of face, teeth, laughter. I roared and shook, laughing, until I caused the workers to chuckle, too. It thrilled and stunned me. It's all gone so fast. Bring my babies back. I'll be good. I promise. I get it now. I get it.