hale.of.bay

Home home.
Things are different now, but many things are still the same.
...the persistent early morning buzz of a low flying crop duster...a soft rustle from the maples outside my window...birds chirping and squawking to one another, crickets...so many crickets...the calm rattle of the cicadas, informing and assuring me of the constant cycle that is life and death. Life and death.
Yesterday my 99 year old great grandma who is one month away from turning one hundred was moved from her assisted living home in a nearby town to the nursing home in Tipton which means her health is no longer stable enough to support her living with independence. Which really is fucking amazing for a 99 year old. I recall last summer her joking about wishing she would, "just die already" said with a smirk on her face. Maybe it's selfish, but I wish she would just make it one more month.
I really miss my grandma today. I keep trying on all her rings that are in my room. I know she's been dead for a year, but coming home this time and not being able to go home to her house has felt really shitty. I don't really feel like doing anything today. I just want to go to town and have lunch in her kitchen. But I can't. Someone else lives there now.
My mom just left the house because she was bored. I'm kinda bored too. But it's beautiful outside. I need to go out to it. I really miss everyone in Atlanta, my love the most...and I miss Cabbagetown. I feel silly because I haven't even been gone four days!! In limbo and homesick.
I've been collecting a lot of cicada exoskeletons in the past few days. Each year during this time they shed, lay eggs in the ground, and die. The skeletons I've found are most commonly on the underside of tree branches, and are one of the few visual traces these insects leave behind in their short but noisy life. This is the first summer ever that I've actually been able to see one come out of its' hard shell. Before this, I've never seen a cicada in a tree, or flying, or anything...just their skeleton, and just their noise.
...I think this is some kind of lesson.