Steadier Footing

The sky has been gray for awhile now. A few days, anyway. I like it. And I'm looking forward to winter, when iron clouds will hang above me most of the time. I'm thinking of it as a trial run, because lately I've been thinking I'd like it in Portland.
I lived there when I was little. I don't remember much about it, but I like what memories I have. Blustery beaches and big waves, steel-tented cobalt with shredded white edges beating themselves against wet-blackened rocks to shake the salt spray from their roiling backs.
They were all around me once, and so was my brother and my dad and Otto and Gretchen, our two Dobermans. Their black fur was beaded with seamist and fine salt crusted their whiskers. They looked old and dignified, like Poseidon's hounds, in spite of the long pink tongues dangling from their mouths.
The tide had come in, and the five of us were stuck there, on that rock in the sea. I think the rock had a name, but I don't remember it now. And I think there were pictures from that day, but I've lost them.
I know I wasn't afraid. I don't remember how we got back to shore, but it wasn't frightening.
I was only four years old then. No, maybe I was three. I thought our house was called Portland. It made sense to me. Everyone said we lived in Portland, and everyone referred to houses as places in which a family lived, and so it follows quite logically in a child's mind that her house might be called Portland. No one else seems to understand the logic in that thought process, but I still do.
And I understand why, for a few years, I was sure I would grow up to be a pony. My parents would tell me, "You can be anything you want to be." And I wanted to be a pony. I imagined myself as a pony, yellow-gold with long, flowing, white mane and tail. In my vision, my eyes and hooves were blue, and I reared on my hind legs on the brown shag-like carpet of our living room, whinnying in celebration of what it was to be a pony.
Now I want to be a criminal profiler, or a dolphin trainer.
Or a pony. Those were simpler times.
I wouldn't have to go to college to be a pony. I wouldn't have to move away from home.
Everything is here. It seems like such a waste, to have built such a life here, only to leave it so soon. Why did I bother with painting my room green with jungle vines, or hanging pretty things from a tree by the creek, or carving secrets into it's trunk? Why did I bother to invest so much of myself here when it is only a place for me to wait out the first quarter of my life? Always knowing I would leave someday soon, why did I let this become home to me? Only to uproot. I know that's the way things are done, but maybe it shouldn't be that way. Maybe the focus of "home" should be directed more towards that ambiguous place where you'll end up. The place you move into, planning to stay forever. Even if you don't end up staying forever, it's better than tethering your heart to a place when you know for sure you'll leave it.
And how can I feel at peace in a bed where a dog has never been and will never be? It isn't right to sleep without a dog. It's lonely and cold and just...not right. All my life there has been a dog at the foot of my bed. Or at the head of the bed with me, fighting for my pillow. There's always been twitching paws in the dark, deep groans of contentment, a heavy warm body to guard me from the cold, and sharp-toothed protection from things that go bump in the night.
My loyal companion sleeping beside me now--a black mass of softness and friendship sprawled across the blankets--he has no idea that in three days his master will abandon him. That she'll leave him to occupy this king-sized bed by himself; won't be there throughout the day to offer a scratch or table scraps or a soothing voice.
He has no idea, and it will take him by surprise and he won't understand why. He'll be pitifully happy to see me every time I visit. Me, who chose a white-washed dorm room over him, my constant, loyal dog.
He'll be old when I graduate. Almost eleven. But then, wherever I go I'll take him. Maybe we'll go to Portland and find a rock and let the tide trap us there.
Because, frankly, I'd rather relive childhood than go on to whatever comes next. Nothing is as blissful as childhood; nothing as care-free as ignorance. Knowledge cannot be unlearned. Maturity can't be ungained.
The avalanche has begun and time won't stand still for me.
There is no steadier footing.