Thursday and Friday were the most beautiful no-coat days. I walked to school in 46 degree sunshine that I could actually feel and left my heavy wool coat and hanging in my closet. It was a brief but lovely break from the relentless Windy East Coast Chill.
It’s foolish to say that I had a hard week, because everyone has hard weeks. But I did, and I came home absolutely bushed. My body crashed, but my brain wouldn’t rest. The remedy? Around one a.m. I popped a Xanax and turned on The Devil Wears Prada and fell asleep before Anne Hathaway is reinvented into a chic Material Girl, which was a shame because I really do love a good makeover montage.
Between three and four that morning, I woke to the sound of branches cracking against my deck, to metal scraping on the pavement and tumbling down the asphalt of our charming street. In my drugged daze, I worried that the garbage cans might slam into the side my favorite green Volvo parked across the street, or that my deck would fall right off of the side of my house. I imagined it crushing my roommate J’s car, probably because she insists on leaving the backdoor unlocked so she doesn’t have to walk the 20 extra feet to our front door.
My eyes were too stubborn to fully open, too thick with medicine, but I could see my white cotton curtains fluttering at the heavy wind, a reminder that my deck doors are poorly fashioned. I turned to my left side and felt a cool breeze sweep across my face, and then my bed began to rock from side to side like a rowboat, a slave to the current. I listened to that wind all night.
When my roommate M walked into the kitchen the next morning, she looked as tired as I felt.
“Didn’t sleep?” I asked.
“No. You?"
“Not enough.”
“I kept waking up to the house,” she said and reached for her Cheerios.
“The house?” I asked through a mouthful of oatmeal.
“Yeah, didn’t you feel it rocking?”
“The house rocked?”
“Yeah. Old New England houses in the wind, they rock. You didn’t notice?”
No need for a rowboat or the salty Atlantic in 55 mile per hour gusts.
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