Nearly seven years later

I sit at work. It is a hot day. Summer again. I don't like summer as much as I once did. These days it makes me feel slightly uneasy.

I am struggling with a bit of recalcitrant code. I run, re-run, de-bug. Fiddle faddle. It still doesn't want to play nice, doesn't quite want to do what I think it should.

I adjust my head phones. The endless burbling in my ears stops boredom and too much idle conversation. Both of which I am prone to getting sucked in by.

***

A song plays. A song that featured on the OC - showing my age here. A song about the seven people who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart upon reentry.

And my brain fizzes. The transition between space and earth, womb and life. The pause, when you realise that you are going to die. That there is no chance you will survive this.

***

Boys and girls in cars, 
Dogs and birds on lawns,

And for a moment I bask in it. This luck of mine. This undeserved moment in front of a screen. With the sun shining in the window. The pesky code. The pasty office workers. A sandwich and a cool drink, I am giddy and sick with my own good fortune.

***

Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born

All that anticipation. That moment just before. And that little conversation about jackets and the turn of phrase, 'we're being born.' Reminded me of my girls. Maybe not even aware that they were together. But they were. About to be born. 

And I feel as though I am spinning far above my office, my screen and my bit of coding. Maybe as far off as a space shuttle. 

From here I can touch the sun.

***

My typing is interrupted by Jessica. I'm not at work now. Back home and reflecting on how I felt earlier.

It is too hot and she wants another drink of water. We briefly debate whether she wants the hot meals provided by the school or a 'packed lunch' of sandwiches when she starts her new school in September. She wants the latter. She says it is my decision what goes in the packed lunch but please not to put a chocolate in her lunch box as she will get in trouble. 

And now she is back in bed.

*** 

I briefly wonder what Georgina would have wanted? What she would have said? There is usually a small shadow conversation, in the wake of these everyday exchanges. With someone utterly gone. Burnt up on entry. 

This is all I wanted to bring home to you.