Dear Worry

Migrating in the Dark

Dear Worry,

I never planned to live in a city. But here I am.

Highways, sirens, dogs barking, odd muffled explosions, accidents, unhoused people, trash strewn along every creek, and airplanes.

In my neighborhood, though, there is an award winning bakery and taco-house, a coffee shop, old pocket parks revitalized, and a community garden just down from the train.

Everywhere people walk and gather, line up for foodie food, and drinky drinks and happenings of every variety. I’d wanted a little more country. A texas cow. A vista. But the more we looked for that place, the more uncertain we became about who we are. So we chose the better investment. The financial bargain that might carve a path, until we figured ourselves out.

It’s felt more honest, at times—the city life. A this-is-the-world-type-feeling and I’m in it. No longer hiding out in a suburban enclave of Colorado—a fact that brings looks of awe and confusion when I tell any Texan that I left it for here.

But here, there are not thirty years of memories. I don’t run into what I could’ve done or should’ve done and want to do again. I don’t see my son everywhere where he used to be. There’s some reprieve in that. Loneliness, too.

I wanted to rinse Colorado out, to rinse me out. I wanted to set it on a boat and let it go down river. To Texas, I guess.

In our city dwelling, there are birds of every variety, though. And now, as spring is bringing first greens, and pops of pinks and purples and blues, the sky life of this city is nothing short of breath-taking. “They just live,” I keep thinking. “Look at them, flitting about, excited, nesting, flying around, mating.” The city is just the thing underneath.

But, dearest Worry, some birds migrate.

Seasonally move on. Move back. Change. Need to leave or return or return to leave.

We’ve been turning off our outdoor lights. Hoping, as the ornithologists have told us, that it will help the migrating birds on their path.

So I flip a few switches. Shroud us in darkness in the center of our city block.

A prayer in the form of dark.

Love,
Kris