Reading Time: 8 mins #
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The Dairy Queen was still there, which stopped me for a second, but everything else looked smaller: the high school, the post office, the house I grew up in, now painted a color I did not recognize. A hot, dry wind hit me as I stepped out of the rental car, not unlike the breeze I remembered from childhood, and it did not care that I had been gone five years.
I had not just moved away. I sold everything, bought a suitcase that cost too much – it broke after the first month in Bangkok. I decided I would live anywhere on this planet that had wifi and a bed. Live the digital nomad lifestyle, they say. Sounds like freedom. Mostly, it’s just loneliness.
Molly texted me out of nowhere: “You home anytime soon, hon?” It wasn’t a long message, less dramatic… just four words I could not ignore. So I booked a flight the next day.
The Diner
I got there first, old habit, and ordered coffee while watching the door. The diner had not changed at all – sticky booths, weak coffee, a pie display with the same sad slice of cherry nobody ever orders. Then Molly walked in at 7:14. I know the time because I looked at my phone, pretending to be busy, trying to calm my heart.
She looked older and thinner, her hair shorter and dyed a shade of brown I had never seen on her. But her “devilish” eyes were the same. That is how I knew her. We hugged too long, the way you do when you have not seen someone in years, and you are afraid of what you might say if you look at them too soon.
“You look good,” she said.
“You too,” I said.
We both lied. That was fine. That was the warm-up.
The Catch-Up
We ordered food we did not want and coffee we did not need. The first twenty minutes were filled with nothing important – jobs, weather, the fact that the high school football team still loses every playoff game.
Then Molly put her fork down.
“David left two years ago.”
I knew David. High school sweetheart. Married at twenty-two, house at twenty-five, baby at twenty-seven—the picture of small-town success. “I heard,” I said. “I did not know what to say, so I said nothing.”
She nodded. “That’s okay. There’s nothing to say.”
[The Wind at the Diner Door | moneycatzzz.com]
He met someone at work, someone younger, someone who did not have a kid with allergies or a mortgage that kept them up at night. He moved to Dallas. He sees Clara every other weekend. He is already engaged again. “I stayed too long,“ Molly said. “I thought if I just held on tight enough, nothing would fall apart. That is not how it works.”
A gust rattled the window behind our booth – sudden, brief, enough to make us both glance outside. I thought about the things I had let go: the apartments I never unpacked, the people I did not call back, the version of me who believed that staying was weakness. “I left too much,“ I said.
She looked at me. “I know.”
The Digital Nomad Life
She asked about my life, the one I chose, the one that looks like an Instagram feed but feels like a hospital waiting room. “It sounds amazing,“ she said. “All those cities.”
“It is amazing, mostly,“ I said. “And it is exhausting.”
I told her about the airports, the hotels that all look the same, the wind in six different cities – each one different. Chicago wind cuts through you; Bali wind smells like salt; Cairo pushes hot air from one pyramid to another. I told her about the loneliness, the way people can surround you and still feel like you are watching your own life from outside a window. You stop knowing what you want because you are always adapting to wherever you just landed.
“That sounds lonely,“ she said.
“It is,“ I said. “But it is also real.”
She stirred her coffee. “At least you are living.”
“Am I? I am moving. I am not sure those are the same thing.”
The Regrets
The dinner crowd cleared out. Just us and the waitress wiping down the counter. “Do you ever regret it?“ Molly asked. “Leaving?”
I thought about that for a long time. “I regret who I left. Not where I went.”
She nodded, and I could see she understood. The friendships I lost, the ones I assumed would wait for me, the people I stopped calling because I was always in a different time zone, always distracted, always telling myself I would reach out tomorrow. Tomorrow never came. “I thought I was chasing something,“ I said. “Now I think I was just running. Same motion, different direction.”
Molly said, “My therapist calls the wind ‘the uninvited.'”
I laughed. “That is darker than wind.”
“Yeah. But more accurate.”
She told me about the night David left. The front door did not slam; it just closed. She stood in the kitchen for an hour, holding a dish towel, not knowing what to do next. The next morning, Clara asked, “Where’s daddy?“ and Molly had to say, “he is not coming back,“ then watch her daughter’s face change forever. “I did not choose any of it,“ she said. “The wind just blew through my house and took everything.”
The Good
We sat in silence for a minute, maybe two. Then Molly spoke. “Clara.“ A real smile lit her face, the first one I had seen all night. “Clara is the only good thing that came out of all of it.“ She paused. “No. That is not true. I came out of it, too. Broken, but out.”
She pulled out her phone and showed me photos. Clara at a school play. On a bike. Clara missing her two front teeth, grinning like she had won something. “She’s a real smarty pants. Funny. Reads books that are too advanced for her age and then explains them to anyone who will listen.”
“That is you,“ I said.
“No. That is her. I try to stay out of her way.”
I told her about the good parts of my life too – hot-air ballooning in Cappadocia, Turkey, and the mornings I woke up overlooking the ridge in Zhangjiajie, China – and felt, for one second, like anything was possible. A soft draft at my back, not in my face, carrying me somewhere I had never been. “That sounds like freedom,“ she said.
“It sounds like freedom, but sometimes it feels like running away.”
“Is there a difference?”
“I do not know. I am still figuring it out.”
The Wind
“Do you ever feel like something is moving you?“ Molly asked. “Like you are not the one making the decisions?“ I thought about the sudden job offers, the cities I landed in without planning, the people who appeared and disappeared like weather – the wind that seemed to blow me from one place to the next without asking permission.
“Yeah. I used to think I was chasing it. Now I think it was just carrying me.”
“What is ‘it’?”
[The Dust We Drove Away From | moneycatzzz.com]
I shrugged. “Change. Time. The wind. I do not have a word for it.”
She stirred her coffee again, watching the little swirl she had made. “I think we spend our whole lives trying to control things we cannot. The wind is just a reminder that we are not in charge.”
“I do not want to be in charge. I want to stop being surprised.”
She laughed. “That is not how it works.”
“I know.”
The breeze outside picked up, not strong, just enough to whistle through the crack in the diner door. That same sound from childhood. Texas is telling you to stay inside or get blown away.
The Goodbye
We paid the bill and left a too-big tip because that is what you do when you feel guilty for not visiting more often. We stood in the parking lot, dust blowing across the asphalt. A tumbleweed rolled past – it felt like a cliché, but it happened, so I am telling you.
“Come back sooner,“ Molly said.
“I will try.”
She did not believe me. I did not believe myself. But we said it anyway. We hugged again, shorter this time, less desperate. “Take care of yourself,“ I said. “You too,“ she said.
I did not know why, but a tear fell from my eye, and I remembered the passage from Richard Wagamese.
“Years dissolve and time is irrelevant in the light of true reunion. It means to become one again. It means to be joined. It means to be one in spirit, one energy, one song. It means to be returned to the balance you find when friendships are struck – and the entryway is a hug.”
I got in my car. She walked to hers. I watched her get smaller in the rearview mirror until she was just a shape, then a dot, then nothing. The wind was still blowing. It did not care about my flight, my suitcase, or the tears I wiped from my sleeve before I hit the highway. That was when I finally understood: you do not chase the wind, you do not run from it – you learn to feel it and keep driving.
The Wind I Finally Stopped Fighting
I am back at my digs after watching the sunrise at Angkor Wat: another city, another coffee shop, another wifi password taped to a counter. But something is different. I feel the wind now – not as an enemy, not as a guide, just as a fact. I texted Molly last night: “I am still here.“ She replied, “I know.”
I have stopped asking for more than that.
_________________________
Richard Wagamese’s Collection That Kept Me Sane
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Acknowledgment: Cover Image by moneycatzzz.com
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