mortal uh tea

it's a tea with milk afternoon. if Kiernan still haunts me this will probably make him laugh at the old woman i've become, but really... its blasted cold in the office and i'm feeling pensive. if i had a lap cat and some knitting to do, i'd be all set.

i'm not sure if today's tea really counts as old woman tea though... in spite of the milk, it's not any boring old tea, but some highly spiced chai, to which i've added hazelnut sweetener and milk. so really, i believe i've crossed over from tea to some other starbuckian beverage altogether.

it dawned on me recently (in the middle of an email to a friend) to suspect that one of the driving forces behind my new-found desperation to contact old friends is the recent loss of a dear (and young) one. all this time i had been blaming it on approaching middle age (which may very well have some part in it), but i am leaning, more and more, toward this difficulty i have with saying good-bye - especially as regards the last good-bye.

it's compounded when I regard the parting that often happened with these friends from my youth... these friends who shared my invincibility... who, like me, were too vibrant for the seriousness of saying "I love you, and wherever you go, you are a part of me, and I want to thank you for the part of yourself that you've given to me, and please take care of the part of me that I have given you in return." there's so much more weight these days.

youth is NOT wasted on the young, i think. i'm not sure if - weighted by the depths of 'maturity'- any of those soft sweet moments that comprise so many of these fond memories could have happened with my mind as it is now. certainly, the things i do now have more meaning, and are probably more strongly rooted in "things i WILL remember" but these things lack the airy lightness - the very innocence - of those carefree (truthfully, mostly careless) moments. nougat, or maybe even lighter - cotton candy - sweet because of the ephemeral. squish it all up, make it dense, and it's too much.

pondersome day, today...