Thank You for Calling AAA Mid-Atlantic.

It’s like I’ve become a different person recently. I’ve been exhausted and up tremendously late—but I’ve accomplished essentially nill. I’ve fallen madly in love and have had some of the best and most magical dates—but I’m falling out of touch with the world. I don’t know where the hours are going, the time to write back and call home, the time to stay somewhere in the loose perimeter of the loop. My organized hierarchy of things done here and now, then and there is crumbling. I guess I could panic. Instead, I’m just kind of floating along. It’s wholly surreal. This whole love thing is giving me a new sense of stability, I think; it’s redrawing the boundaries. I’m not relying on my lists like I used to. It’s good—but it’s also bad. I want some of that control back. The starred folder in the gmail outweighs my drafts 10 to 1, which is Not. Cool. Time just slips slips slips away with him.

The afternoon hours after church and lunch Sunday are instructive: they found the PhD and me … well, let’s just say “involved,” in a situation implicating my bedroom and the afternoon sun; air conditioning cranked to counter the heat otherwise a bi-product of this closeness we can’t seem to shake. So we’re there, just being; we’re getting a little feisty when we hear this ringing. “Is that your phone?” he asks. It isn’t. We ignore it, and carry on. The ringing stops; quiet, but then a voice. A LOUD voice. A screechy metallic voice, the likes of which can only come from volume too high on a feeble speakerphoned connection. “Thank you for calling AAA Mid-Atlantic!,” a perky woman’s voice said from somewhere in the tangle of my sheets. Expletives were uttered as we located his phone, terminated the interchange (with our apologies), and tried to pick back up. Then we laughed. Hard.

By the time I noticed the hour I was massively late to my evening church group. Oops? Things didn’t get much better on Monday, when I realized I still hadn’t transferred currency yet every place I called was all, rupees? Did you order them in advance? We can have them for you in three to five days, which is fine till I realize I don’t have that. Evidently I’m leaving the country today. TONIGHT. Boarding a plane and peacing out. (Late June: did it or did it not come flying out of freaking nowhere?)

I found only one place—one—with currency in stock, and put it all on hold; after work I trained up there and bought them clear out. The commute was a disaster of delays and full trains, and I’m still peeved at the way metro handled it. “Police incident,” they said; expect delays on the red line. “A train is experiencing mechanical difficulties.” Technically, okay, yes, that’s accurate—but kind of like saying “we’re getting some rain” as your house washes down the street and your pets drown in flood waters. I get the desire to not cause concern, because chaos is contagious, but really? A police situation and mechanical difficulties? While we were pushing each other on and off of trains, sweating frustration and holding curses under our breaths, people were dying. That seems somehow so wrong, so shameful.

Five billion people called and e-mailed to be sure I was alive. I hate that I feel like I barely had time to check in with them.

I think sometimes you do break down; you need a tow, or a hanger in your window, to set things straight again. Other times, you just need the offer. The reminder that help is there, and that there is a wider world that you’ll return to someday. There’s a time and a place to say ah, no thanks, kiss a little longer, and take the long and scenic walk back. It’s the “back” that’s important. This love is real, but it’s so new; we’re on the roller coaster down, but there will be a back up. The magic carpet always lands, and really, it’s the things we do on the ground that make those night-flights possible.

So I’m taking a little karmic hiatus off in India through the fourth; when I come back, I intend to be back. We’ll see how that plays out. In the meantime! Happy summer. Love and saris all around.