All I had to do was skip one Monday to make today seem impossibly far away. And yet, here it is. A regular Monday. A back to work Monday. I like skipped Mondays a whole lot better.
I’m still trying to adjust to the pace and demands of life at home. My mind seems hesitant to return, lingering somewhere in the past, leaving my body to fend for itself. Yesterday I ate too much, out of boredom, I’m sure, as I sat around tired. I’ve been very tired ever since I returned. Exhausted almost. The balance of the days and the nights has yet to level out.
But it’s back to work. People are waiting. But not an impossible amount, so there is hope. The phone was relatively quiet while I was away - a good thing. I’d feared there would be so much catch-up to do when I got back that the trip would end up feeling like a foolish decision.
It’s hard to get a grasp on how many things have happened in the last two weeks. Randy and I both visited our grandfather’s graves - a first for both of us. I saw my sister and her family after more then five years apart. I watched familiar territory move past my eyes, thinking that time cannot erase everything. I listened over the phone to problems happening back at home. Divorce inched its way closer and closer. A loan was approved for $100,000, that today I will deposit and spend in such a way that financial burden falls squarely on my shoulders and someone else walks free. I will be 43 years old and $300,000 in debt. I have no doubt which number makes everyone’s eyebrows shoot up to the sky and I think it is sad. We measure everything with money, including each other. I don’t like it. I don’t agree.
It’s the first number, the 43, that has me concerned. Numbers with dollar signs in front of them move both ways. $300,000 will return to zero eventually. But my 43 can only go in one direction. Returning to zero with age means something completely different, and I think we are all fools for not measuring life on this scale. Myself included.
I think that is where my mind lingers, back with my friends, talking and laughing, stuck in a place where nothing is measured with money. Maybe my mind floats slowly through a familiar town, or stops along a lake, or moves down that abandoned, Minnesota county road over and over in an endless loop, at peace for all eternity.