Two nights ago I stayed up until after 2:00 a.m. with some insane burst of energy. Last night I woke at 2:00 a.m. full of what-about-this-what-about-that, picturing my daughter driving up the New Jersey Turnpike with my mom riding shotgun and her suitcase-sized oxygen unit seat-belted into the back. Oxygen is flammable, I thought. Worryworryworry. Those east-coasters drive like demons on that turnpike. Worryworryworry. Only now, somehow, at the age of nearly fifty-nine, I know how to step outside the worry, step outside myself, and say. Okay. Breathe. And keep going back to the breath like I do when I meditate while my brain is tap dancing all over itself. And with the man who loves me breathing in a deep sleep beside me, it wasn't so hard.
And now my mom and the soon-to-be maid of honor are lounging in a waterfront hotel halfway to Boston. My mom was sipping her martini when the daughter called. In a couple of hours from now, they'll be asleep. The ssssssiippp-pppsssshhh of the oxygen machine a fore-shadowing of the surf on Maine's southern coast.
Tomorrow night there'll be nearly a dozen of us in Boston. And tonight, who knows, I may wake again, worried that we'll oversleep, that I'll forget some essential something, that I'll be careening around coastal curves in the dark between the rehearsal dinner and the hotel. But it's just worry. Oh. Hello, worry. You again? I'll breathe. And then in the morning, get on a plane.
photo credit: a guy named Phil. It was a long time ago, my wedding--and I can't remember Phil's last name. He took some nice pictures.
