I feel crazy, but I feel confident.  I feel small, but I feel significant.  I feel powerless, but I feel protected.  I feel like I am going to miss Santa Barbara terribly, but I know that this is what I am supposed to be doing.

So after all is said and done and packed, well…

I feel ready.

It all really doesn’t make sense, and yet in another world, in belonging to another kingdom, such is the wonted way of life…or so I am told.

The arm floaties would not be put on.  The stairs woluld not be used, not today.  For today was little Molly’s big girl moment—she was going to jump in the deep end of the pool!

Yet as she stood on the edge of the glistening tiles, her lungs froze.  She couldn’t breathe.  Her heart, meanwhile, wouldn’t stop beating at what seemed like a million miles per hour.

It was all so much scarier from this view.

She wasn’t going to do it.  She was going to do it. She wasn’t going to do it.  She was…well, she was just going to stand there for a little bit longer.

While up there, though, she looked down and locked eyes with her daddy who was already in the pool and close to the projected landing zone.  And in that moment and in those eyes, she saw the most intense kind of love and knew nothing bad could or would happen to her.  She didn’t know it then, but this was the very love that would put pictures in his wallet where money used to be and bruises on his shins when she would fall while learning how to rollerblade.  Because of this very love, she had no reason to doubt.  She knew she could trust him.  She did trust him.

And so she jumped.

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I’d say that’s a fairly accurate reflection of what’s going on inside this head of mine.

Many people have favorite quotations and understandably so, for when printed in the right font and paired with the right picture, they can make one feel as if he or she could change the world from the Wal-Mart greeting card aisle.  Slightly less popular, though, are favorite words, one of mine being

e.phem.er.al:  lasting for a very short time.

Growing up, I was a competitive little girl.  Nowadays, well, I am a competitive young woman.  Ergo when I think of this word and its transient connotations, I take it as a personal challenge–a double-dog dare if you will–me against the inevitability of time.

And so begins the race to fill each 24-hour heat with as much merriment and memory-making as possible while time hovers over me, keeping perfect tempo and snatching my days away as soon as midnight strikes.

Consequently in this mindset, even the most tedious items of life have seemed to take on a new hop, skip, and leap in their passing.  The car in front of me riding its brakes down Barker’s Pass is now another opportunity to admire the panoramic view of the city I have come to adore.  Limited parking downtown is now another opportunity to stroll the streets I have lived so much life on.  And the couple thousand folklórico dance routines at Fiesta are a couple thousand more excuses to sit outside underneath the summer sun and watch the sky change from blue to gold to orange to pink to purple.

For soon enough, I will be forced to move on from this place and time. And  like a little girl stuffing her pockets with Red Hots before Sunday school (which may or may not have been the case in my own childhood), I need to know that I have stuffed my pockets with enough Santa Barbara memories to last me a lifetime.  So although the inevitability of time will eventually gets its way…

Shhh.

You should see my stash.