Jetting

Goodbye city of Durham, for a little while. City of medicine, city of tobacco, city of red bricks, glass block windows, abandoned factories, boarded windows, train whistles, crows, my new home. Durham has charmed me with its dusty gap-toothed smile, and I'm going to miss it for the next ten days. And I'm going to miss my husband even more.

I've been summoned to New York on a secret mission! No, actually, my old boss just needed a project done and didn't want to bother training someone new when he knew I could do it blindfolded. And since I'm still jobless and penniless, I jumped at the chance for a free trip to New York for a week to earn some money. Plus I'll get to see old friends, and go to old favorite places. Sant Ambroeus, I'm already salivating! The upside: good money, New York, New York food, New York friends. The downside: I'm going to miss my husband, I'm going to be away from him on my birthday, and I know he's going to miss me. It all happened so suddenly that there wasn't even time for us to think about it, which is why I found myself crying at the airport this morning. It's not as if I'm being deployed to a foreign country for 2 years (how do they do it?) It's only ten days, but everything is different now that I'm married, and so newly. I'm not just a loner anymore, a free spirit that can wander around at will, no ties. My heart is bound up with his, and ten days apart seems momentous.

Last night C found a sphinx moth on the front porch and put it in a jar so I could see it. It lay still next to a leaf, trying to blend it's patchy gray wings in with the twigs and leaves that C had stuck in the jar to make it feel more at home. When it got dark, he set it free, and once it figured out which way to go, the large moth flew out of the protective jar into the perilous night. The moth is free and so am I, but I'm already wishing I were on my way home.