Tapped Out (for the Moment)

Dearest Rachel –

There are days when the slightest thing can trigger a flood of memories for me to write you about. Like Marcel Proust going on for pages about the shape, texture, and mouthfeel of a madeleine cookie, there are days when I could write for ages on the smallest thing, if I felt some kind of emotional connection between it and our time together. I can fixate on a Post-it Note, or an old letter you left behind, or dwell on a photograph from better days, and spend words and paragraphs reminiscing about you, and the circumstances – real or imagined, because my memory isn’t anywhere near as good as I’d like it to be – behind them.

Just as an example, I was trimming my nails the other day, which led me to remembering specifically why I used to do that (hint: it was because you didn’t like getting scratched up by my ‘magic fingers,’ as your referred to them). If I were to actually go on at length about it – not that I would, given the topic it’s adjacent to – and I were in a particularly cheeky mood, I’d probably title that essay something along the lines of “Being a Good Scout,” based on a brief (and unfortunately-worded, but consequently hilarious) slogan for the Girl Scouts of America back in the day. You know what I mean, so I don’t have to go into any further detail.

Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those inspired days.

To be sure, it may be simply a touch of burnout. While I never did manage to find my notebook from our second trip (which is weird, because at one point, it had been sitting on my dresser rather than being lost amongst the other paraphernalia throughout the house. So, although Jan and I found the notebook from 2014, somehow my 2018 notes wound up getting lost in the process), I’ve been transcribing those notes to refer to them throughout our upcoming travels. Similarly, I’ve been going through several chapters of your Bible study on your thought closet, to be released over the next few Sundays. And of course, there is the occasional Israel-related topic that comes to mind for me to prep and put up against our future experiences. So while I’ve been doing a lot of writing (including several two-a-days with you this week, even), I can’t think of much in particular to write you about this morning. It seems that I’m tapped out, for the moment.

Some days are just like that, though; there isn’t much happening to catch you up on. Those two-a-days did most of the heavy lifting, and while there may have been moments in which I felt something that might have been worth filling you in on, those things do have a nasty habit of dissipating quickly, much like dreams in the morning. There’s only so much I can talk about without losing hold of other things that are passing through my mind. Once the ones I write you about are exhausted, I may turn to those other thoughts – only to find that they’ve disappeared. Meanwhile, there’s not much actually going on around me that you’d find interesting – at least, not until evening, when we’re meeting the girls for dinner (both Erin and I are wanting to burn a few gift cards we never get around to using otherwise – but at that point, I’m too wrapped up in experiencing it to write down my impressions of events (and once they’re over, it’s all I can do to pour myself into bed), so the best I can offer is a brief rundown tomorrow morning – by which time, I may have other things on my mind to tell you about. So, it’s really just this one-day lull.

So, you might ask, why don’t I take the day off from writing you, rather than putting together this apology? No one’s forcing me to do this every day, after all. But then, you should understand the desire to keep up a streak – between Candy Crush and Gardens of Time, you had your fair share of things you wanted to keep up with on a daily basis – so you of all people could forgive my persistence.

But there’s another strange factor at play, that I didn’t really pay attention to until recently. I’m not so obsessive about losing you that I’m literally counting the days from the accident, but by consistently keeping up with writing to you, this site hosting my letters keeps track of the number of days for me. All I have to do is to add about a dozen to the number of days I’ve been keeping in touch with you, and I know exactly how long it’s been, without having to actually spend effort counting backwards all the time. True, I’m putting in additional effort in other ways, but these records of what’s going on around and within me serve various additional purposes; not that I could accurately put those into words at the moment. Like I said, it’s one of those days, today.

So, I hope you’ll accept that, and maybe look forward to what I might have to tell you about tomorrow. Maybe I’ll let you know about dinner, and the things we discussed (or even ate); maybe it will be about the new Saturday morning routine I’ve inadvertently established with Daniel, and how it compares to what those mornings were like back in the day; maybe there will be another dream to tell you about (or that you visited me in – that would be nice). We’ll just have to see.

Until then, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.