Fragments From Floyd

What day is this? Monday? Is that possible? I haven’t seen or even thought about the calendar for days, haven’t known what time of day it was, really (meaning according to our Virginia eating and sleeping schedules) and most of the time I haven’t known or needed to know where I was in space because our daughter has been doing all the driving. Being oriented to person, place and time is one property of what we call being in our right mind, so I guess not having a firm grasp on two out of three accounts for the out-of-place disorientation I feel this morning after four days in my daughter's very comfortable home twelve hundred miles from Floyd County.

Now, in a few hours, we'll take our first flight of three today. We'll cross two time zones, leaving the arid grasslands and entering familiar green and rolling land once more. We will arrive home tonight. Alerts of impending events will pop up on the computer. We’ll find dates for this week circled on our refrigerator calendar and phone calls will wait to be returned. Oh, yes. There’s the dog and cat again; bills due before the end of the month; obligations; commitments. But there will also be the hundred small pleasures of knowing where and when things are and having them ‘just so’—mundane but routine, predictable and at hand.

I had thought I would have plenty of time to write out the details of our time here in Rapid City. But I’m discovering that so much of the ease of writing for me comes from the place and the feel of it. I’m dependent on my ergonomic keyboard; my adjustable arm rests; my software tools. A creature of habit, I listen for the usual ambient sounds of Goose Creek, and miss the familiar fit of my usual early morning writing hour. I’m cooking in somebody else’s kitchen. But home again, soon enough. See you then.