oh, the feathers...

I pulled into the Sydney’s parking lot this morning, ready to bust out some pages for several papers due in the next few weeks. I did the usual last min check in the mirror to make sure I didn’t have crazy hair or spinach in my teeth, not that I’ve eaten spinach today, but you never know…Then I put my hand in my pocket to grab my daily vitamin and with the vitamin out came this fluff of feathers. I just started laughing in my car, at all these feathers that won’t go away.

It must have been a year ago that I was knocked out by this 48 hour flu bug. I had broken my 14 year streak Anyhow, I hadn’t done a thing in this 48 hours but be sick. So I started to feel guilty and decided I should do SOMETHING productive. I thought, I’m going to wash this sickness out of my sheets and clothes by doing laundry. YES, I felt good about this. So I set out to wash my sheets, wash the sickness I slept into my sheets away, throw in some jeans and a throw from the couch…now this should have been just fine and dandy.

(A jump back in time…)

Laundry is done, hooray. I am officially PRODUCTIVE. To my surprise, I open the dryer and a bazillion feathers waft every which direction in the air and into the next room. OH MY GOSH, what is happening? I see all my bedding and jeans and the down throw from the couch COVERED in feathers; they’re EVERYWHERE. I quickly scan my brain, sure it’s down, but I have washed it before…SURELY I would remember if this had happened the first time. Yes, I HAD washed it before and THIS did not happen. What the heck happened? I slowly take some of the items out of the dryer, after pulling a massive handful of feathers out of the lint catcher, and a zillion more feathers blow around the room. I am in complete disbelief at this point, until I spot the problem. There is a three inch tear in the side of the down blanket, I have no clue how it got there, but I think it may have been an evil plot conceived by zipper of my jeans…In this tear is another massive handful of feathers overflowing into the room. I have no idea what to do and my seven saltine crackers and ginger ale did not provide me the energy needed to tackle this fiasco that feels like a dream.

I collapse into my laundry; feathers fly into the air and fall like…feathers, all around me.

Oh dear.

(Back to the present.)

I kept finding those feathers everywhere. I could count on seeing three, five or ten of ‘em every time I did laundry. Maybe I would see a few here and there around the apartment or in the car. Those feather sightings gradually disappeared about six months ago. I hardly noticed, but if I had I would have taken a moment of gratitude for their departure. But today, TODAY, they decided to appear again, just like that, and crawl back into my life.

It got me thinking while I was just sitting in my own laughter out in the parking lot, that no matter how much you thought something or someone was out of your life, parts or pieces of them waltz back in whether it be a phone call, an email, a dream, a photo, a song, a memory, a feather fluff. Sometimes they are welcome reminders, other times not. We may welcome these people back into our lives after their absence and quickly adjust to their presence.

Sometimes these people or thoughts are not welcome. I was talking with my friend, Courtney about how letting go is a constant process. Letting go of thoughts or forgiving someone are difficult things and over and over again, we have to give those thoughts over. And when they come back we just give them back over again.

Memory is an amazing thing. For a friend that has gone away forever; we find ways to keep them with us in our memories, which is why I rest in nostalgia when I hear ‘black bird’ by the Beatles or ‘alive’ by Pearl Jam. I welcome these “feathers” when they come around. But not this old fluff in my pocket, I’m over those feathers.