Moving About

I am sitting the the living room of my suite at the Embassy Suites in Lynnwood, Washington, just north of Seattle. David is here researching what we will do today, and tomorrow. There is almost no noise yet I can still hear the sound of a baby screaming in the breakfast lobby below. That kid's got volume. The noise passes and the only sound remaining is the click-click of the keys as I tap away at the keyboard.

Outside it is raining, the soft kind of rain that permeates this coast, small enough to filter into every pore and crack on your skin. The sky is covered in a dull grey blanket stretching from the tree rimmed edge of my horizon all round. There is no break, no ruffle, no patch of blue; it is a solid, soaked, leaden blanket offering no reprise from the rain. They call Seattle the Emerald City because it is so green; this weather is the reason. It may stop raining today, perhaps tomorrow. By then we will have moved on, down the road to Portland or perhaps Bend, eventually wending our way to southern Idaho before we turn north once again and head home.

I have a quietude about me this morning, a thoughtfulness that is also seeping inward. I am enjoying one of those rare mornings of calm and ease. While my fingers are sore, along with my arms and neck, I am okay with the whole thing. It is what my life has become and I am becoming more and more used to it. It is an internal sense of equilibrium, where the stress of travel has left me and the excitement of the road has not yet arrived.

Suddenly there is a bang, a slam of the door next door. It looks as if my neighbour has suddenly realized the free breakfast will end in a few minutes. It passes, the sudden shock and noise disappearing as quickly as it began, and the quiet returns. Today will have other excitements; David wants to see the Boeing Museum and the EMP Museum, and maybe the Spruce Goose. I simply want to enjoy another day of being alive, another day of freedom on the road.

I like road trips. They reek of promised adventure and expected unknowns. They turn life into a passing play, a show to watch as we move along the highway. Perhaps it is the simple act of being in motion, where I can pretend that my disease is not real, where I can escape the bounds of ordinary daily life. To move about is to be free; one day that will be stolen from me too, but not for today.