Boulder, CO – “You’ve Almost Reached Sally Taylor” – Sept 27, 1999

I’ve been home a week and life feels soooooo stagnant.  Where the motion of life on the road once allowed my emotions to vent off me in great plumes of colorful streamers down the highway, they now land in stagnant clumps.  Loneliness, anxiety, fear, joy, and rage all pile up inside me like a mess of loose, clotted yarn.  Sure I had some terminal illness, I made an appointment with my chiropractor, Dr. Dougan on Thursday.  He muscle tested me and said that while my adrenals were spent and my skin dehydrated, my “dis-ease” was in my head.  “You’re perfectly healthy,” he insisted, pressing down with a grunt on my forearm.  But I still felt gnarly as I walked home, like gristle spit politely into a cotton napkin and squirreled away under a table.

We were in such a rush to get home after Nashville, racing west through the night against the sun’s rise in the east. I fell through my front door in Boulder at 3 am like a marathoner crossing the finish line.  I was exhausted, sweating under the weight of so many bags and guitar cases. Home smelled wrong, like a cheap plastic baby doll head left on a radiator. Was this what home always smelled like? I wondered as I dropped my bags on the couch. Not recalling what normal people do at home, I wandered toward the blinking red light on my answering machine.  My outgoing message played first:

“Hey, you’ve almost reached Sally Taylor.  I’m out of town for a month and a half and won’t be checking this machine ‘til the end of September so I hope you don’t need a ride to the emergency room or an urgent answer to a math problem unless it’s 294.56…  and then, well, you’re welcome.  Call you in the fall.”  A beep preceded a flood of old messages that crackled from my ancient, crusty machine.  They were from people I’d forgotten were friends inviting me to parties long since over.   There was one from my mom reminding me to call her best friend on her birthday and one from Dad who forgot I was on the road and wanted to make sure I renewed my passport.

As I listened to the endless stream of messages marking the months I’d missed, I forgot how tired I was just ten minutes ago in the van and started doing things I’d left undone in July. I picked up the vacuum I’d left lying in the living room and finished the dishes in the sink.  I cleared the refrigerator, chucking the half-empty, molding Ragu sauce and a petrified slice of pizza left uncovered on a paper plate.  I changed the ink in my printer and a light bulb in the ceiling and as the sun finally caught up with me in our race around the planet, it found me unpacking my bags. I put a load of laundry through before allowing myself the comfort of my bed.

In the clean house I’d meant to leave myself to return to, I crawled under a familiar blanket, put on my stupid sky-blue retainer with the glitter tiger on it, which I’ll have to wear for the rest of my life (thanks Dr. Lempshin) and set myself an alarm for 10 am.  Then, with a sigh, I blissfully fell asleep for the next 30 hours.