Realism in a Brownie

 April Daffodils and Edinburgh Castle

 

 

On this date last year I was in New York, waiting at the airport for my connecting flight to Edinburgh. It was a poignant trip...my first without Alan. I was eager to see the family, friends, the city I love above all others, although I was also scared and grieving.
 

And then I landed at Edinburgh Airport and my world suddenly made sense again.  I was home.  Everything was familiar and comfortable, normal and reassuring.  I was hugged and loved and cared for; cried and laughed with people who had known Alan all his life and shared in my grief.  There were also long hours by myself as I wandered the city, retracing the years, the places, the memories.

 

Though it was a most painful journey, it was also the best thing I could have done.  I was able to be with people who meant something to me, to Alan...and we meant something to them.  I was no longer alone on top of a mountain, in a strange town where I didn't know a soul, in an America that was more foreign to me than the moon.

 

When I returned from Scotland last October, I expected to have the house sold in the Spring and be long gone from this lonely little town--with any luck at all, I'd be back in Edinburgh, where I belong.  I can't believe a whole year has gone by and I'm still here, stuck in limbo, while time just continues on...inexorably.  I guess what I'm saying here is, I'm feeling sorry for myself today.

 

I'll get over it.  I'm nothing if not a realist.  I can't change the economy, kick start the real estate market, drag someone off the street to buy the house.  Hopefully, at some point, this inertia will make sense, there will be some meaning to the wait, some purpose behind the holding pattern, and the time will come to move forward.

 

But until then, in a concerted effort to cheer myself up, get out of the doldrums, keep calm and carry on--I'm going now to make brownies.  Really.  It's the only thing today that makes sense...