Crossroads

It was bad enough that I woke up soaked in sweat and realized I couldn't keep blaming it on the jalapeno pizza.  Another damn hot flash. Like a tap on the shoulder, momentarily startling, sometimes even makes you jump, though it's hardly a surprise. Everything changes.

I had cooled off by the time I found myself at that intersection, the same intersection I had passed through almost every weekday morning for years.  The crossing guards, more often than not bundled up against the cold, clutching the giant stop signs that defied the waiting drivers to turn, much less lean on the horn, until every miniature pedestrian had two feet safely back up on the curb.

Tap, tap. I'm not sure why it took my breath away, why I felt so startled. The same crossing guards, the same miniature pedestrians. Different faces, but the same size. The same long line of cars, heading north, waiting to turn east. I was heading west this time, a different perspective, I suppose. I was no longer a part of this scenery, just a spectator, a fly on the wall. So utterly familiar, so utterly unexpected.

I looked for my old neighbor, the one who always walked her dog around that time, stopping for a while to chat with the guards while they waited out the long red lights. She wasn't there. I hope the dog is okay. It was disconcerting, not seeing her there. It was still more disconcerting, seeing life going on the way it always had, when so much has changed for me. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

Somehow, that evening, I ended up killing some time at bar in a popular local restaurant.  The "old" local, the place of the morning crossing guards with their stop signs and my old neighbor walking her dog and the miniature pedestrians oblivious to the impatient drivers waiting to turn, their horns eerily silent. The place I left two and a half years ago, a move less about distance than about symbolism, about starting fresh, and maybe even about being a little anonymous if I felt like it. My "new" local. I'm hardly as anonymous there as I had planned, but I still enjoy the newness.

Though I was never particularly anonymous in the "old" local -- how can you be, really, in a suburban fishbowl -- I was never particularly social either. Which is why it did not surprise me that I knew a good percentage of the folks wandering in, but it did surprise me that I went out of my way to catch the attention of several. To be out there, to say hello, to even solicit a few hugs. Tap, tap. An alien has inhabited my body, riding the wave of the hot flashes.

Another intersection. I again felt I was no longer a part of this scenery, just a spectator, a fly on the wall. So utterly familiar, so utterly unexpected. I caught myself, reminding myself that just because they are all still there, it does not mean that everything has not changed for them as well. That they, too, don't suffer pangs when they pass through the old intersections, no longer toting their own miniature people around, no longer revolving around the schedule of crossing guards. That they, like me, don't juggle love and loss and extreme joy and devastating sadness on a daily basis, in a life that is always evolving, always changing.

An occasional pause at an intersection is good, especially when everything else can be so shaky.