In the Air

Little sweetheart, it’s late Friday night. I’ve just walked all the way home from W104th Street. After sub zero temperatures and the crazy “Arctic Bomb” or whatever that canceled flights and dumped a foot of snow, just a week later it’s nearly 60f here. A light rain is falling. I’m wearing those boots you like to see me in. And the black leather jacket you gave me for Christmas. And the blue Skye tee shirt you gave me. Your handwriting is tattooed on each forearm. I carry you with me.

It’s an unseasonably warm January night, almost like spring. And as I walk I have the strongest feeling of time travel. Of being with you in San Francisco. Maybe it has to do with striding these hills in a mist wearing these very boots that reminds me of just popping round the corner while you stay warm at home in your jammies and I grab a treat for us or maybe even full take out from Crepevine.

In the early days, I used to write here that I could feel things like this, little details, kinesthetically, like a phantom limb. I have that sensation tonight, little sweetheart. Something in the feel of my boots on the pavement, the mist in the air, the night around me, your spirit with me and transporting.

Maybe it’s the San Franciscan-like weather. Maybe it’s that I spent the evening talking about you.

My friend from Taize, the older lady who lost her husband just a few years ago, invited me over to meet her son (both her late husband and her son are musicians, drummers) and see their amazing apartment, big as a small house, right in Manhattan. Very Upper West Side. The kind of place you could get back in the 70’s before the neighborhood became more affluent and fashionable. We had pizza and I saw their music room and Barbara and I talked about things, about you.

You are so very much on my mind tonight, little sweetheart, and near me in the long walk home. Your mom told me some stories about you that I need to write down and haven’t yet. There’s so much to do.

But most the important of them is just to listen quietly for your presence and guidance and know that you are with me. That we will be together soon and forever. As I know, somehow, we always have been.

It’s night. And unseasonably warm and magic one. And I feel you near. With all my love.