Sitting in the Atlanta airport awaiting a flight to Chicago where I will have a date with destiny and the course of my whole life could change – for better or worse I do not know. Getting here was an adventure. It involved a skittish emphysemic cab driver named Gerald Cody, who seemed like a really nice guy, but couldn’t help from going over the lane separator lines and quickly jerking the Atlanta Lenox Ford back into the correct lane. Upon dropping me off at the airport, he told me to have fun at the party in Chicago, and to try not to burn the city down. I didn’t tell him of any party – I guess I did tell him about Chicago, but I do not remember – so I guessed he was referring to the White Sox win in the World Series last night. I told him I would put out any fires that I saw.
Earlier in the day I was preparing for my departure: packing clothes, printing itineraries, balancing my checkbook, checking batteries etc. I had a couple of loads of clothes still to be processed. Now I know I have mentioned before that throughout the breakup laundry has been a surefire way to get the memories rolling. I don’t know really why this is. It seems that it takes so little. While downstairs removing the last load from the dryer, I cleaned the lint filter afterwards. I usually wait until I put a load in to clean the filter, but today I remembered that G used to clean after unloading, and I wanted to do it like she did it. I don’t really know why, but it made me feel closer. It made the memories seem a slight bit better, and it calmed my heart to do that small thing.
I took the lint from the filter after moistening a finger and raking it over both panels. Then a rolled into a loose ball and placed it in the empty dryer sheet box that is used for dryer lint. Then I remembered that G was the one who started that box. It is almost busting at the seems now, and I realized I have not washed that much since she left, so much of that lint was made while she was still living there. A lot of that is her lint. Lint from her clothes, and from mine, when she washed and dried them and removed the lint from the filter. Her hand had been on most of that lint. I sporadically broke into one of my brief sobbing fits. It soon abated, but the memory was still there, good and bad.
The most frustrating thing about the situation right now is that I usually don’t have this superstitious attention to such things. In more stable times of my life, I scoff at such beliefs and practices. It’s just now I get to see and communicate so little with G. We do not talk on the phone. We communicate infrequently via email and text message. I understand why things are like this, so I look to things like lint removal and rubbing a new South Carolina quarter, that I have yet to be able to bring myself to spend, to “communicate” with her. I also talk to God and ask him to convey messages to her. I have no idea if they make their way to her.
So I am en route to Chicago and a date with destiny as I have said. I don’t know if I really want a big change in my life or not, but I thought I would give it a shot. What I do want is a thing that I cannot have right now, and it has sent my mind into many wonderamas as well. Sometimes I comfort myself by saying that everything is okay, that G is not dead. I am so glad that is true, but at times it feels like she is leaving my life and will be practically dead to me one day. That we will not be able to be part of each others’ lives anymore. I wonder if she were just a ghost to me, would that ghost be able to answer all of the swirling questions in my head. Would it be able to tell me that it still loves me and misses me? Would it sometimes lay in the bed beside with me, or make sure that I am not lonely at dinner and other times throughout the day? I do not want her to be just a ghost in my life. I hope we can always be part of each others’ lives, but if I can put faith in lint it seems possible that the spirit world may provide comfort in answers as well.
I guess I just wish things could be like they were a couple of years ago, when roughly this time of the year we were heading to Chicago together for the first time. It was the time that we would go to Delilah’s with J and S, and G would force us to play Spades, and reluctant at first, we would later realize we were having a grand time. J and S both fell for her on that trip, I think. Back then I was considering a future as well, but it seemed so much more secure, and prospectively happy. It was early in the relationship and things were changing dramatically in my life. Then, however, I looked forward to the changes. It seemed as if dreams were coming true. Now, I am staring down the barrel of changes too, going to Chicago without her, and all the possibilities out there, and I am so scared. I wish I could just go back a couple of years. Do it all over again. Make it all better. Be a better man. Keep the gift that was given to me. But the past is unchangeable… and so I stare and stare and stare down that barrel.
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