WA

Sometimes, I forget that I am in Washington. I will be somewhere very ordinary, like at Target looking at towels or at JCPenney searching for a zip up hoody (I left my black one in Ohio, and it's cold here), and I will see something out of the corner of my eye. A little thing perhaps; a wisp of dark hair, glasses frames, and I will forget. I will forget that it could not possibly be my aunt Debbie turning the corner with an overflowing cart, that my mother is not holding those placemats. I forget that Jenny is in class and Emily is teaching school, and that all of these things are happening thousands of miles away. No one I know is nearby. And then I go outside, and I see foothills and unfamiliar parking lots, and I remember. I am in Washington.
This feeling has become more complicated with Torren's arrival last Monday. Sometimes now he will be the one coming around the corner, and I will not look twice at him, thinking he is in my imagination. And other times, when I see him walking next to me through the grocery store, it seems all the more apparent that the elderly woman who just stopped in the bakery must be my grandmother, and that someone I know will happen around the corner at any minute. But no one ever does.