miss

Just realized I never posted this entry. I wrote it a month ago. The concept of missing someone or something seems a heck of a lot different now.

I've missed some things in my life, but never to this extent.
About a year ago I bought a coat. The thing is absolutely hilarious; puffy, yellow and rated to Everest. I always had a vision of me in a coat of this caliber. Preparedness. Right.
Tonight it snowed, probably a little harder than it usually does on an early December night in Minnesota. Maybe it was the snow, maybe the barometer, maybe my current state of mind, but damn it I wanted to put that coat to the test. To the test means a couple beers in the pocket and an ipod in my hand, but whatever. I kicked my way through the white, feeling incomplete, like I have for the last couple months. I'm a self-admitted drama queen. Walking through the blowing snow listening to a playlist of songs that intensify the amount I miss my kid was some odd self-flagellation. I sat on the swing in the park across from our house, just sipping and swinging, feeling sorry for myself that my kid is in a different country. They don't get him like I get him. They don't need him like I need him and he doesn't need them like he needs me.
It was a Honda I think. I watched its ass-end swing out, then back the other way, like a slow motion dog who's really, really excited to see you walk through the door. Then it stopped, right there on the low-grade slope in front of me and my wallowing. Stopped.
To make a long story short, there I was in the middle of a Minnesota street, wrapped in my Everest-ready yellow coat, pushing a car driven by my Chinese food delivery kid, who had absolutely no idea how to maneuver through a couple inches of fresh North American snow. I'd push, gain momentum, and he'd stop to say thank you. Over and over again. Push, momentum, stop, thank you.
He never made it up that hill. He backed up and took the plowed street. But you know, standing there in my ridiculous coat, I felt a little more in touch than incomplete.