It’s been a windy May, like it’s springtime in the Southwest, or something.
The kind of wind that rearranges things. It doesn’t knock anything over, but it moves through you. It unsettles.
I notice an internal wind in the way a thought is interrupted by some louder thought I didn’t even ask for. It’s as if some part of me is gusting in another direction entirely, pulling pieces of my attention with it. Perimenopause brain fog, maybe. Or just being tired in a deeper place than sleep can touch.
Last week, my son and I drove to Sedona to watch Secret Mall Apartment at the indie theatre. It is a strange little film about a man who secretly lived in a shopping mall for years. I liked what he said when explaining his life to his girlfriend, who thought he was nuts. He said that his lifestyle afforded him a constant connection with the people he loved most. I loved how clear he was about that.
Since the fire, I’ve been rebuilding my life out of temporary spaces, emotional storage units, and weird little rituals that keep me feeling slightly human. A cup of tea with an insane amount of cream. Hustling to create what was steady in past summers again now, like trying to walk upstairs underwater. A clay bird whistle. Library visits. I don’t know if these things fix anything. But they remind me I still exist, have preferences, small pleasures, a rhythm that’s mine even in all this motion. They help me know I’m more than what I’ve lost.
On the drive home, windows cracked, and I suddenly remembered sitting on a Yellow Pages phonebook as a child in booster seats before booster seats were a thing. I hadn’t thought of that in 30 years. One second, I navigated switchbacks; the next, I was five years old, legs swinging, perched on a stack of something my son needed me to describe. There was something about sitting on something makeshift just to reach the table. Survival often looks like that: propping yourself up with whatever you’ve got to stay in the conversation.
It struck me how buried memory can be. It can live silently inside you for decades until the right wind, film, or moment of stillness stirs it loose.
When I asked my son what his goal was this year, he shrugged and said, “To have fun.” Like it was any summer, in some ways, he’s still a kid, unchanged and expectant of summer to deliver in the ways it always has. Because eleven-year-olds don’t think about summer as adults do, working in front of screens all day. Honestly, no one even told me that would happen either.
In meteorology, wind is defined by where it comes from, not where it’s going. It’s one of the only elements that can touch every one of your senses without being seen. In Greek mythology, the Anemoi were wind gods; each direction had a personality.
I’m just hoping the unsettled dust keeps shaking more memories loose.
