coasting

Just opened my journal… last entry dated Friday, April 13th.

I’ve felt no desire to write.

Not that things haven’t been happening – they have – but I haven’t felt the desire to pen them into existence……

My kids make me smile, laugh, shake my head, clench my jaw in frustration. Simultaneously hurtling and crawling to the end of the year – winding down and finishing up; 8th graders preparing for finals, 6th graders checking out.

Friends meet: drinks at 360 to celebrate a birthday and watch the sun go down in breezy bliss, or at a karaoke bar to do our best to steal the mic from the obnoxious wedding party taking over with their wrenching attempts. We meet sneakily for a surprise party for someone who deserves it, at my place on Tuesdays to have tacos and celebrate that we’re over the hump, at Jen’s apartment to have a good time without spending money, on the roof to dangle our feet in our small-but-at-least-it’s-a-pool pool.

Weekends pass – some productive, livening: errands, the gym, cleaning and decorating the apartment; others lazy and glazed from too many DVD episodes of “Lost”.

The heat is rising. Seeping into my bones as I step outside, at first a relief for my frozen, air-conditioned soul, but then more oppressing with each step. Night no longer brings relief, Safa park is absent our pounding steps. The haze appears again on the horizon, cloaking Sheik Zayed and the rising Burj Dubai in lavender fog.

The building next door is becoming a reality, metal bangs and clangs as invisible work is done below the surface, building a foundation for more annoyance and interrupting of sleep.

For the first time in many years, I'm going to leave for the summer and return to the same place - no new dorm room, no new city. There will be new faces, new buildings and malls and toll booths, but the reality is that for the first time I"ll be coming home again to a place that is my own.... and that, that is something I have yet to wrap my mind around....