Adjustments
It’s quiet in Penryn tonight. Outside, the dogs are running in wild, determined circles around the perimeter of the yard, tracking the sounds of distant donkeys, geese, and peacocks. Inside, we humans don’t know what to do with ourselves. It might be the transition from the mountains, the adjustment from thin pine air to the heavy inhalations of the foothills. We all seem to be in a sleepy nostalgia, daydreaming in the colors of sunny, snow-covered mountain days. The colors always dim as we drive down the mountain and both my mom and I look hard out the window, barely blinking, to catch every last bit of color. Milo loved the snow. He would jump up four feet onto thick snow banks and hop into the distance, belly dragging across untouched snow. He is unaffected by the mountain nostalgia, perfectly happy chasing imaginary peacocks.
I have always been kind to myself when it comes to allowing periods of adjustment, taking time to appreciate something that I know I will miss—people, places, sounds, feelings. But I also know that it’s time to embrace a different kind of adjustment right now and return to my dissertation. Each day there is pounding at the door and each day I have been telling it to go away, to let me sleep just a little bit longer. Yesterday I sat in front of the fire place, a good book in hand, and allowed myself that one more day of rest. Today there was the task of getting home, but tonight there is no excuse. Tonight there is just the quiet of three people spread out, each in a different room of this big house. It’s the perfect moment to return to my writing, but instead I’m thinking about snow banks and pine trees and places that never feel like work.
