March, 2005 in anticlimatic

So much of my life blurs together in my memory, but the spring of 2005- despite being incredibly mundane- has retained a place in the most crystal clear of recollections.

A good memory to me is like a good dream. The important ingredients are a few very specific pieces of imagery, and an incredible depth and impression of feeling. I can smell the dirty snow melting in the blue morning hours while shuffling around outside of my parents home.

Trying to keep warm while smoking cigarettes. In my early 20s still, recently back in town after living in several different states for a number of years (and prior to that I lived on my own in an apartment not too far from home for my 18th through 21st years).

Suffice to say, I was back with my parents briefly, but was a well established adult by this time and well endowed with my own independence, vices of course included in the package. The state I lived in before moving home was too far away to coordinate any new place to live, or job, so I saved up a sum of money and took advantage of my parents good graces and my old bedroom, which had come available.

I don’t remember much of what I did during the daylight hours of that winter and spring that I returned home. I was unemployed, jobs wouldn’t start to open until summer could be seen, I had some savings, and I was once again living under the warm and familiar roof of my mom and dad, with a brother and a sister- still kids- also in the house. It would be the last time we’d share a roof. And I knew it would, at the time.

I only remember the nights. Smoking out of my old tiny childhood bedroom window. Watching late night marathons of Rosanne and Home Improvement and Frasier. Nowhere to go, nothing much to do, except stay up late, snack, and lie upon the warm beating heart of a family so palpable and permanent in my memory. Like it was yesterday. Like it was right now.

Instead of gone, completely and forever.