Vaya Con Dios, Carlsbad

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz

Day 66

Well, I’m packed up and I’m out of here tomorrow, we’re taking a side trip to visit my youngest son, pregnant daughter-in-law, and the beloved grandson. They just moved to TX this week and are just settling in so we won’t stay long, I’m anxious to be back on my mountain even if it is for a short time.
I’ll miss dusty old Carlsbad, most of the last two months have been spent here and I’ve been sober the whole time so it will have a special place in my heart, there’s not many places that can claim that auspicious sentiment.

I’ll miss the little stone church and the parishioners that grew to expect this stranger on week day mornings. I wonder if they’ll ask themselves, who was the strange lady and where did she go.

I’ll miss my dawn walks along the slow moving Pecos River and the ducks that grew to expect me and the popcorn in my pockets, I wonder if they’ll wonder when the lady with the popcorn is coming back.

I’ll miss my friends I made here at the apartment complex, a pack of latchkey kids who swear I make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world.

I’ll miss the quirkiness, the pretty music lady at the church who never seems to comb her hair and the guy who rushed up to me as I was going into the bathroom at the riverwalk park yesterday morning. He handed me a roll of toilet paper and said, “They’ve been out for two days, I brought my own from home.” Now that’s downright neighborly. Weird, but neighborly.

I always seem to end up in quirky little towns, maybe it’s me, maybe it’s life.

I looked back and saw that the longest I’ve been sober before yesterday was 64 days, yesterday was day 65 for this go around. Maybe that was why I was so cranky, I was treading uncharted waters. Drinking is often compared to marriage and when you end it, you have to hold the bad memories of it close to you so you can end it, you can’t let any of those good memories creep in because they confuse you and cause you to waiver. But eventually, a few of the good ones get through and you look back and wish you would have done things differently. Maybe someday I'll learn to smile at the good memories, because there were some, but that doesn’t mean I want to go back. I don’t.

So today I’m just out there doing my best not to forget anything but still leave some of the good stuff behind.