You ready yet?

There's a coffee shop in Portland called Cathedral.  It's near the UP campus and right next to a little dive bar called The Portway.  This past Sunday I sat next to the bookshelves there in a big chartreuse wing back.  The books are arranged according to jacket color, and while browsing through yellow I spotted a copy of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.  I grabbed it off the shelf and thumbed it, remembering someone I know had been reading it before pilgrimage.  

"Mental Gymnastics" is the name of one of the chapters.  I didn't read it at all, just stared for a long while at those two words side by side.  

Memorial weekend in St. Cloud, James, Ruthie and I were talking about the mental gymnastics we all perform regularly that prevent us from being who we want to be.  James referenced catastrophic thinking.  I nodded my agreement on that one maybe a little too quickly.  Ruthie said she constantly thinks that when she hangs out in a group of three the other two will fall into a romance and leave her behind.  Very specific fear, dude.  Did this happen more than once?  

"What's yours?" they asked.  Lol, you're not ready for my cartwheels is what I thought.  I wowed them with my verbal gymnastics and changed the subject.

I'm in Olympia right now.  It's the 3rd of July and I know James's family just got home with a ton of groceries for tomorrow.  

They're a real and good if not somewhat dysfunctional bunch.  His dad is a member of the NRA.  His mom is my aunt and sister and cousin and girl I've always known to share all the little feelings and experiences I had as a girl who grew up the same way.  His brother Josh looks up to him and holds onto him like a port in the storm that is their family life.  They've held onto one another really.  But Josh is 19 and that is sometimes the most obvious thing about him.  Their youngest brother, Jakob, is pretty freakin cute.  He still loves his dad in a way that is only possible when you don't quite think of your parent as a person yet, but as a hero, as an unshakable example of what you wanna be someday.  Jakob also looks pretty much exactly like James and if I find it eerie, I can only imagine that James finds it so disturbing he'd rather not say.

Tomorrow's my dad's bday.  He'd always say, "All those fireworks are my candles, and America is my cake."

Every year he'd bring out a cigar and take the entire day to smoke it.  Most of its use was lighting the fuses anyone else was too nervous to light.  He'd crouch down carefully and swiftly back away.  

Now I'm thinking back to Solstice.  Was that only two weekends ago?  

At some point Mike and Andrew and some others walked to the gas station and bought a bunch of Black & Milds.  

Steve had just shown up when I got a phone call from Mike saying, "Alex wants you to come out and watch her smoke.  We're on the porch."

We were all a little faded by that point, so I used it as an excuse to partake.  I'm sorry to say that it tasted great.  The smell and the smoke felt like chocolate, like vanilla, like smooth and sweet air kissing my lips and my tongue and I knew it was death but I kept going.  I thought of him and his pens perpetually in his shirt pocket.  His black hair and his brown face showing so much delight every summer breathing in this tobacco.  I get this, dad.  This makes sense.

Tbh tho, I never wanna do that again.