Disappearances

Today, in a few hours, Baby will disappear onto a bus bounding for the border. She's looking forward to people who make familiar vowel sounds, to seeing her home at the bottom of the hill and pressed into the river. The hard part is that Hulk isn't coming. This morning, Baby rooted around for something to leave him: a pile of just the right words, a pancake in the likeness of the Virgin Mary, a drawing, a something. Something to make her still around after she goes away. But then Hulk&Baby remembered that they'll have a whole bunch of ways of being present for each other in their month apart; here's how they remember even through disappearance:

-Baby leaves a trail of hair bands everywhere from when she used to have a ponytail, and the ponytail used to go SPROING! Hulk will find these, and remember Baby tiptoeing around Albany.

-Hulk gave Baby a rocket that she's taken with her (along with some bits of clothing, an angel, and twine).

-Hulk will walk by places he's been with Baby and think ahhhhhh. Baby will walk by places she's never been and wish she was sharing them with Hulk. Ahhhhhh.

-Baby built a nest for Hulk out of cozy, soft bits of things, and seeds which will soon turn into flowers...or at least sprouts.

-Hulk gave Baby a sack of jellies, but knowing her she'll gobble them up before even getting off the bus!

-They will write letters to each other, and play tag through the post.

- What Hulk&Baby have amassed mountains of, though, and what they have with them as they sit here typing, and will carry on their respective journeys over the course of the next several weeks, is memories.

-Memories of a girl in the snow, coming late to visit a boy of uncertain moral fiber; tiptoeing in his hallway, trying to decide whether to find the right door or run away home. Boy, inside, worked all day, cooked all evening, hoping...not sure for what, mostly just to listen to her laugh and watch her runaway bangs tell secrets to her dimples.
-Memories of road trips and campus errands, good coffee and bad sleep, crrrfee shop dates and misty-evening walks. Chasing Piggie in the mud and pedaling bikes in the cold.

- Baby wonders if her geographic center--her binnacle of the dirt and soul--may have shifted. Hulk says maybe so, and that's a happy thing, but he had to make her put back a baseball she was trying to buy the other day and make her buy a hockey puck instead. It was only going to be used for a doorstop, anyway, but still: roots is roots.

That's the best thing about being accidentally, entirely in love: One doesn't ask any change of one's intended or attempt some misguided plan of partner-improvement. Arrival--being for each other--is enough, and all.

-n&c-