its fantastically romantic to feel like you can't live without the one you love, but if you're a yoko and you park your heart at that space station you're bound for misery and heartache and wet pillows and who wants that not me. when the van pulls away and rides out of site, i park my heart in a waiting zone. the valet takes it to an undisclosed yet safe location. its in an emotional bermuda triangle. i learn survival tactics and i go about my biz and i do what i do and i do it well. and fairly quickly, if i let it, desperateness dissolves and i am whole. but this freedom of autonomy can dangerously threaten to eclipse the duet that is josh and stef, and therefore his re-entry into clark street has to be handled very carefully.
re-entry has always been a huge challenge in space travel. NASA does all this preparation, training, calculating, building, maintenance, waiting, and finally the nauts go on the mission to study the weight of an egg-sized moon rock and when its over: mission accomplished? nope. they still have to get home. they still have to have to worry about re-entry. according to the modern classic authority on all things spacey Apollo 13 (the movie), the little shuttle pod thing has to return into the atmosphere at precisely the right speed, right angle, and at the right velocity. it's heat shield has to be intact, its cooling system working, its oxygen tanks at appropriate levels. if all these things are working, then and only then can they can re-enter the earth's atmosphere and drop into one of the oceans so they can be hooked up to a chopper and flown to the nearest hyatt regency or whatever.
that's how delicate it is when my man comes in off the road. how is he gonna re-enter here? is his heat shield functional or is intense emotion of the homestead atmosphere gonna burn him out? does he have sufficient oxygen to get through or are we suffocating him? how's my mood? his state of mind? my vibe? are we gonna be able to interface at this galactic level?
we both know its weird so we let it be weird. we're face to face. he's no longer a figment of my ear, brain, and dreams... he's sitting in the yellow chair taking up actual space and oxygen and food wanting to know what movie we're going to watch later. its trippy lemme tell ya. i feel like swatting him to see if he'll yelp. then i'll know if he's real or if i'm making him up. mostly i just stare at him and listen to the debrief. i love the debrief. i want to know it all. every little thing. so he talks and talks until he gets hungry. then i mildly panic.
the thing is i sort of forgot how to make food. its funny that that's the big deal. that rut is hard to shake as yokos know only too well. so i get a little ornery after a tour: "what, now i have to cook? what am i even going to make?" mostly we just make a big salad together. i'm not even going to mention cleaning. that skill dies a sweet death every time josh walks out the door. so pretty much i'm lazy and messy when he's gone and his return only serves to illuminate those little weaknesses. ah well. time to shape up.
i asked josh what's the hardest thing about being off tour. it's that every day out there has a definite purpose, a goal, a summit to prepare for and everything you do is in anticipation of this high-adrenaline event. he plays the show and achieves the goal and one more city gets rocked. its like every day he has his own little mount everest.
then he comes home and is man enough to know there are some other peeps he has to rock and he brings presents and love and after a day and a half we all wonder how we lived without him for so long. he knows just where he belongs and we all grin and sigh and flutter around the leader of this pack. daddy's home and he's mine and i am so totally without shame and without regret... just another yoko.
we both know its weird so we let it be weird. we're face to face. he's no longer a figment of my ear, brain, and dreams... he's sitting in the yellow chair taking up actual space and oxygen and food wanting to know what movie we're going to watch later. its trippy lemme tell ya. i feel like swatting him to see if he'll yelp. then i'll know if he's real or if i'm making him up. mostly i just stare at him and listen to the debrief. i love the debrief. i want to know it all. every little thing. so he talks and talks until he gets hungry. then i mildly panic.
the thing is i sort of forgot how to make food. its funny that that's the big deal. that rut is hard to shake as yokos know only too well. so i get a little ornery after a tour: "what, now i have to cook? what am i even going to make?" mostly we just make a big salad together. i'm not even going to mention cleaning. that skill dies a sweet death every time josh walks out the door. so pretty much i'm lazy and messy when he's gone and his return only serves to illuminate those little weaknesses. ah well. time to shape up.
i asked josh what's the hardest thing about being off tour. it's that every day out there has a definite purpose, a goal, a summit to prepare for and everything you do is in anticipation of this high-adrenaline event. he plays the show and achieves the goal and one more city gets rocked. its like every day he has his own little mount everest.
then he comes home and is man enough to know there are some other peeps he has to rock and he brings presents and love and after a day and a half we all wonder how we lived without him for so long. he knows just where he belongs and we all grin and sigh and flutter around the leader of this pack. daddy's home and he's mine and i am so totally without shame and without regret... just another yoko.
No comments:
Post a Comment