Leaf Peepers

Until I headed out to Door County I had never heard the expression “Leaf Peepers” now I see it everywhere.

Sounds a little sordid, but who asked me? My actual impression is as follows. There are long rows of chairs on the banks of Lake Michigan. Middle-aged, and somewhat entitled, people gather there and stare at the horizon. I waded in amongst them. I may look somewhat like them but I sure don’t fit in. First I have the frenetic Hubbin trailing along. He doesn’t sit still. He doesn’t blend or mingle. We don’t drink, not that we wouldn’t like to but it doesn’t work for us. He throws the smooth dolomites back into the bay they took thousands of years to escape. He talks loudly and grows disgruntled when commanded to stare at the sensual pinks and blues of the setting sun he cannot actually see. We are used to the roar of the Pacific and a fireball that defies you to burn your retinas as it lobs itself decisively below the horizon dotted with fishing boats. The whishy whooshy “ooh! ah!” of sailboats and passenger ferries fading into the dimming vastness of a “great” lake doesn’t grab him. He’s got a lake and a boat of his own at home. Why are we doing this? Those damn smooth stones don’t skip. No, he doesn’t want to stack them or make hearts and whorl patterns out of them on the shore. I’m not complaining. I love that he was willing to get me there but the dirty looks we get (I am guilty by association) from the thong padding wine sippers make it an exercise in patience.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMWdcskgrlYPCoyXvyzdkPIxr219FsXe5CMkyaY

Now I’m home and I wake up into the chaos of my usual domestic surroundings and the leftover image of a few solid days surrounded by the beyond expectation midwest splendor of Door County which makes me alight with happy fire until I realize I’m back where I am. I love my place. It is also gorgeous but it is a “Finally!” sort of Fall gorgeous after a season of heat and fire. Happy Hill burned right up to the graves of the settlers and obligation waited for us to come home and catch up after three weeks of distraction and idleness.

It’s no surprise that spectrum guy did a 180 as soon as he got to his new office. Suddenly I wasn’t at fault for anything wrong in the world. I am still expected, and struggling, to clean up the leavins but that never ends. The first day he left to dive head-on into a 12 hour day at work,  I felt so overloaded I suggested maybe my academic endeavors weren’t going to make it. Maybe they’d emulate an early SpaceX and blow apart on the launchpad.

“NO!” says Hubbin “That must not happen. You need to do this!” he says as he pulls on his socks and ties his steel-toed boots.

There was no room for argument. Just when I thought I was going to have to go recruit some feral cats to populate a hallway closet where I could shove him in, ass first, like the old Gingerbread House witch got planted into her own stove, he will revert into that guy on the white horse who will protect me from my own internal dialogue of doom.

It’s behavior like that which makes me love him truly and deeply. This is the karmic payback for enduring marriage to a person with Autism. The Oracle frequently reminds me we are some kind of statistical long shot, amazing and laudable. It can be done. My takeaway from 48 hours of being yelled at from the eastern Montana border to our driveway, for something I did not do (revealed and verified later by the Goddess of scheduling)is that I really need to take my personal adventures as vacations from my spouse and spouslings (who won’t go with me anyway) unless there is inlaw family involved to distract him.