All Adrift (sometimes)

It's actually a beautiful Saturday morning here in New York, contrast to recent hurricanes Irma and Maria. I've been trying to keep up with the updates and want to do my share of sharing online. Garriga-López sisters Adriana Maria and Claudia Sofia are good, reliable, and invested sources if you will, who both post and write a lot info. concerning Puerto Rico and the politics surrounding (and entrenched in) it. Claudia was one of my Hunter college professors in 2006. In one recent facebook post, she writes: 

"Here is a compilation of organizations where your contributions will immediately impact communities in need in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria."
https://medium.com/@themis.ariana/help-pr-now-93df5004e86c

I’m here at work because I was asked to come in this weekend to help out with the training workshop. For some reason I thought "helping out" meant moving boxes, tables, and chairs, so I showed up in a T-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers. Instead, they asked me to cover the front.

That's my smile that says, "I know. I'm too casual for you right now. My bad. But... Welcome!" 


I've had a window of time to write this morning, much as I struggle with making this essay challenge I took on this year a habit and navigating privacy issues on various levels. 

I was thinking about earlier this month (I actually began writing this in September) when I crossed the Times Square subway ramp on my way to a baby shower.  As I was crossing it, a memory popped up. It was when I was walking with my son's father eleven years ago one night after we had just kissed for the first time. He kind of blurted out baffled, "I don’t know about you, but I am full of emotions right now!” as in, what are we going to do now, shit's getting real, apparently!  And I in my confident, romantic, pretentious, cinematic dialogue kind of state said back, “Me too, but what is life without emotions?” which he couldn't deny and said, “That’s true! You’re right about that”. Such unadulterated, elated happiness drifted within me.

I've had that kind of romantic feeling a few times in my life- all the Hope, this out of body kind of happiness. How many times exactly, I don't know right now. But I'm leaning toward 3 right now because of this: 

I could go on about how I always thought Sonny driving backwards like that looked so bizarre and yet so fitting with the story/his character, but right now I'm just reflecting on what he's telling Calogero.
I'm sure there have been more than 3 "great ones" in my life. But the 3 great "happy in love" feelings that come up right away are the aforementioned, and two more. 

The second one I'm remembering happened first and it's the failed romance that's probably working out somewhere else in a parallel universe, because we almost "made it", we almost had it all- and as that damn Adele song "Rolling in the Deep" blasted in the car one afternoon, we sat there listening to it in silence, a couple who was pretty much over but still living together. She kept belting the "We could've had it alllll" chorus and it just reverberated, amplifying a sentiment we've been thinking and feeling so many times.

My initial super happy feeling shot through me when he and I "first" met on a camping trip in 1997. I say "first" because we've known each other before from high school back in ‘91, we just didn’t talk or hang out together much. My joy translated into a feeling where I lost my appetite. We rode in the same car, talking and joking for hours. When we all stopped at a diner halfway through our road trip, I sat there and felt like I didn't need any of this food. Not because it wasn't good or that I was trying to watch my weight or anything, it was because I already felt so “full” in my stomach- of butterflies, excitement, stimulation. 

He and I have been in and out of each other’s lives for a couple decades now. He likes his privacy so I try not to write about him. But as anyone who knows me in ‘real life’ knows his omnipresence in my adulthood and vice versa. Anytime I mention him here (or anyone for that matter), I really try to swing the focus back on myself, the one who is okaying the content of all these public writings.

After first meeting my now-husband in person on the plane ride back from Santiago to New York two years ago, I felt the warm, welcoming feeling of a sustained yes- like yes I could jump into this and commit, and I was excited to start forming our lives together- from the intangible, ethereal airwaves of facebook, Skype, and WhatsApp to real, physical everyday day in-day out living.

I'm tempted to shift the name of my blog from the idea of the reader catching my aimless, vagabond drift to focus on this new chapter in my life- being married AND actually living it out- as opposed to being technically married at 19 and not really living together (occasional sleepovers and hanging out in each other’s apartments shortly before he left the country doesn’t count much), and living with  'baby daddy' Joe for a few years in my mid 30's but us never tying the knot. I'm not in drift-mode so much these days- this blog title is starting to feel a little inaccurate.

But I feel that despite my new stabilities- job, home, kids, marriage, insurance, pet fish that's still alive- you never when you're gonna lose it all, as hurricanes and earthquakes so clearly point out ... so I guess the "Catch My Drift" title remains. At least for this year's writing challenge I've taken on.