A Day in the Life of Sachi

Scary-OMG-glad-I-read-this-now-or-I-could-be-that-one-in-a-million…

Since my skin seems to react to everything, I’m glad I know this now.

My apologies for the lack of bloggy umph this last week. My father’s best friend has been diagnosed with bladder cancer and it has been difficult on the whole family. I consider the man a good friend as well but it is most difficult to watch Dad take things so hard.

The prognosis is good but still scary. I promise that there will be regular bloggy happiness again in the near future. Likely in the next 24 hours.

Seriously though… if you haven’t already had cancer, I’m starting to feel like it’s not such a good idea to be around me these days. Seems like I put the cancer whammy on folks lately.

As I stood on the back patio last night, late into the dying evening, I saw a sight that I thought I’d lost; my long forgotten moon. I’ve seen many moons over many years but none appear quite as this one does. I saw it once, many summers ago, when I was a child understanding that I would be an adult by that time the next year. Just as I saw it then, many years ago, my moon was golden and not the familiar silver to which I had become accustomed. Out of the sticky batts of clouds it ascended, growing higher and higher with each inhale and exhale of sweet, summer breeze. As it lifted, the batts broke free, fiber by fiber, until the moon was clear of the grip.

I stood in the darkness, now punctuated by a golden bulb in the sky, I smelled. (Not me, dork. The air.) I sniffed quick sniffs and drew deep breaths to absorb the world around me. Have you ever smelled the scent of a pine tree growing?

What my nose detected the strongest of all was the smell of my ancestral home that lays I the valley below me. The faint scent of a running creek, flood plains and wild grasses on which our cattle were raised. The soil, once rocky, that I tilled with my own hands as a child and the crab apple tree from which I picked apples while standing on the back of my horse. He allowed it only because I fed the apples to him.

For just a moment, I smelled myself in pig-tails, wearing cut-off bib-overalls. I think that I was barefoot. I smelled myself smiling at a childhood friend, Jenny, as we raced our horses about the neighborhood. I was wearing cowboy hat. As I stood there on the back deck, looking down over my childhood home some 300 yards or so from where I now stood, I swear I could smell Jenny and I racing up the hill toward my current home. They couldn’t see me. To them, this was just an empty lot filled with scotch broom and adventure. We raced through the brush, zig-zagging as we went, and we flew over the jump we’d placed in the middle for ourselves.

And then, all at once, it was gone. We faded into the mist and I couldn’t smell us anymore. But there was my golden moon, high above my head. It smiled down on my as I shook clear of my waking dream.

My heart can rest here. Only on this land can my soul be still; the land that my grandfather and great-grandfather tamed, the land on which my father was born and that he tended with his own hands. For the first time in ages, my mind has slipped free of the sticky clouds and I can rest again.

Tagged by Annika. This is a fun one!

2 things you compliment your husband on while in his presence:

1. He’s a genius. Music, poetry, essays or black ink, he’s brilliant.
2. He’s beautiful. He’s not a runway model but he is beautiful.

2 compliments you give about your husband to others:

1. He does the dishes.
2. Babies love him.

2 Traits you married him for:

1. Patience
2. His belief that the day he stops learning is the day he grows old.

2 days you cherished most being together with your husband:

1. A late night on the sofa, drinking coffee and watching really, really bad movies.
2. My first free weekday after quitting my last job. We drove up the coast for a couple hours and just spent some time together.

2 Material things you would give your husband if you inherited a fortune:

1. A library that he could fill with his own books.
2. A studio in which he could play as loud as he wants as late as he wants.

2 things you would miss most if he left for 2 weeks:

1. My sanity
2. His warmth

2 things that crossed your mind the first time you met your future husband:

1. What’s with the bandana?
2. He’s really loud.
(He was on stage, playing drums.)

2 favorite dates:

1. The one before which we got married.
2. The one that lasted a whole weekend in Sequim, WA.

2 funny, odd things you love about your husband:

1. He is religious about putting out a set of clothing before bed every night. It’s not so much funny because he started the habit after the ’94 earthquake in Northridge during which his poor fishies died a horrible death when their tank smashed against the wall. I find it slightly odd and I also like very much that he has a routine. I’m still searching for mine.
2. His toiletries are VERY tidily set out on the counter.

2 places you have lived with your husband:

1. Encino, CA: The house was falling down around our ears.
2. Port Orchard, WA
(There have only been two places.)

2 favorite vacations:

1. Betty, Nevada: February 2003 (You might not find it on any map.)
2. Erm… I think that was the only REAL vacation we took.

2 people to tag:

I can’t do it. I just can’t.