7.21.02 – closer to fine

my not-yet-21-year-old brother picks me up from the denver airport this morning. i open the passenger side door and shove aside a bottle of malibu rum in order to sit down, making a feeble joke about open-container laws. “don’t worry, carrie and i drank the whole thing last night” he assures me. “it’s just a souvenir now.”

it’s disconcerting that my younger brother turned out to be the popular kid in the family. i mean, we were all nerds in high school, but then chris and i went on to nerd colleges, whereas matt ended up at one of the top five party schools in the nation. his friends, were they not friends of my brother, would be much too cool for me to hang out with.

after a lost ticket mishap, we made it to the KBCO rockfest concert, which was the point of this weekend’s trip to colorado. arriving three and a half hours late meant that we missed the B52’s entirely, but we did get to see jack johnson and the indigo girls, whom i have been wanting to see in concert for years. winter park is quite possibly the most picturesque concert venue on the planet. the stage was set up at the base of the ski lifts, and the general admission seating was on the hillside above the stage. the sky was blue and filled with puffy thunderclouds, the kind with white edges and grey underbellies, that sailed by at high speed all afternoon. colorado has that high rocky-mountain atmosphere where the air is cold but the sun shining thru the thin air is so hot it actually stings on the bare skin. unlike an indoor concert, the air smelled like pine trees and sun-warmed dirt, rather than sweat and beer, and my inability to see emily and amy’s faces on the far-away stage was made up for by the ring of jagged peaks that surround winter park. you know those perfect moments? the ones where everything seems gold-coloured and you stop and catch your breath and realize you are thankful just be in this moment? yeah. it was one of those.

and yet, something was missing from the day: andy. andy, with the kissable earlobes, who writes lullabies for his baby nephew, who can rhyme ‘lackadaisical’ and brings me coffee at work, who reads bedtime stories in a british accent and his eyes crinkle when he smiles, which he does often, whose absence i feel sharply, even moments after he leaves. i didn’t think our lives could intertwine so quickly. we haven’t been apart a single day since i met him, and suddenly i feel the distance pull, like cords inside my chest.