Toffee Stuck and Tongue Tied

No post yesterday because I was moving my brother into college. He's going to Mount Vernon Nazarene, which is a very conservative, very Christian school. Chapel three times a week, no public dancing, no drinking, no R-rated movies.

I felt like a hermit crab there without my protective shell of sarcasm and wit. You just can't be sarcastic there, everyone is so smiley and Christian and happy all the damn time and you feel terrible for making fun of anything because they all believe it in the singing with your eyes closed way. So I just put my brother's bed together, rubber-banded all his electronics cords, and was a supportive sister. I didn't cry when I hugged him goodbye, which was a pretty big triumph. I hope he'll be happy there.

My parents have understandably been a little clingy for the rest of the weekend. They've just left after a full day of shopping for the first care package to go to Mount Vernon and browsing bookstores and getting pizza and making CDs. Little do they know...

I've got a big empty nest care package planned. A couple DVDs that Mom loves. Six or seven mixed CDs because all the ones they have are scratched to shit. Cookies, because Mom doesn't bake anymore. And a loving note from their daughter.

I cleaned out some iTunes playlists tonight and was hit by some music I hadn't heard in a while. Whenever I end a relationship I tend to shun the music that reminds me of it, and this was stuff from my "hippie" ex. It's good music. It makes me miss him, miss us. It hits a chord in the middle of all this nostalgia from senior year, orientation, sending a brother off to college.

I miss being young and ignorant. I miss the uncomplicated kind of way I loved him. I miss the complications of polyamory, and I miss the way we worked together--despite all the drama, we had a core relationship that was very similar to mine with R--supportive and friendly and devoted. I miss missing him, having him on my mind always, writing to him. He was the last person who wrote me love letters in the traditional sense. Of course, I still have them. I'm afraid to read them.

I do this with relationships past. I hermetically seal them, afraid that the feelings haven't died, and that something about the music we had sex to, or the scent of lavender, will wake a sleeping monster. That I've never stopped loving anyone, ever, I've just buried them and moved on.

Or, I can't decide which, I'm afraid I have stopped loving them. That love can die and leave no grief. That I can ever go to Asian food stores without him, or sit under our tree, or listen to the folksinger his stepdad played with.

Or that I will never have that kind of love again. I think it's pretty safe to say yes to that one.