We walk together through the airport inside the silence. Disorientated after a long flight we move into the customs hall passing through space normally crowded. Suddenly we find ourselves outside, driving through a beloved city in the middle of a sunny day.
I’ve been thinking about disillusionment recently.
This past week happened to mark the passage of ten years since my husband, son and I made our bold move across the Atlantic from London to New York.
With the advent of July it feels like we are knee deep in the flowers of endless summer. One week stretches into another with an aimless ease rather like Duke when he leads me around our neighbourhood on our morning ramblings.
We’re back by our neighbourhood fountain again and the sky is cool and comfortingly grey. The dog’s quietly happy to be beside us and my daughter’s busy with some exercises and her scooter.
I stand beside her at the ocean’s edge. She sits, perched on top of her float, gleefully waiting for the surf to strike. I look down at my feet in the wet sand. Rivulets run between my toes bereft of their usual colourful polish.
As I sit in my chair and gaze outwards, night gradually spreads her primordial fingers across the sky. There are noises outside; tonight the neighbourhood crows have arrived, en masse it would seem.
In these long dog days of confinement, with life before a distant memory and life after an unknown, it is only when sitting beside the ocean that any clarity of thought returns to me. As I sit gazing silently through the waves I hear voices calling.
I noticed this evening, as we drove home, that the jacaranda trees are coming into bloom in our neighbourhood. Their presence with that particularly perfect shade of purple which I’ve written about before, adds a wonderful splash of colour to the streets around Los Angeles at this time of year
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief this morning. The day dawned grey and cool with a hint of drizzle on the air. We’ve had a string of particularly hot days where our air conditioning has been running day and night. We’ve all resembled wilting flowers more than anything else and the walls of our lovely house have seemed about to close in on us from all directions at times.
Recently, I’ve been spending time gazing out of the window. I have a favourite chair, a white chaise longue that we bought in the early days of our Manhattan life. Whenever and wherever we move, I always make sure that it sits in comfort by the bedroom window.
We went walking today through a fizzy Friday afternoon. A light breeze blew mischievously around my husband and I as we strolled with the dog- me with my thoughts and he in a walking work meeting; one of those scenes we find ourselves in quite frequently now.
It rained for hours on Sunday. I took more than one solitary walk, quietly happy as the rain fell in a cocoon around me and I listened. Listened carefully as the memories of other rainy days echoed through streets now silent and deserted.
