Restless

Couldn't sleep well last night. Don't think it was nerves about the "it's not really a gig, just think of it as a practice" gig we're playing at a barbecue in York this afteroon even though we haven't practiced in a couple of weeks due to everyone's busy schedules and/or exhaustion resulting from said schedules. Don't think it has any connections to 9-11, the full moon on Wednesday (though it was a beauty) or my constant obsessing about my new teaching gig. It probably wasn't even completely due to my chest cold and that crazy generic Robutussin-ish cough medicine I took last night or the mysterious "mimizu no kusuri" (made from dried powdered worms) that my mother in law swears by.
I think over the past several years my being has become trained to equate mid-September with waking up at 3am to get ready for the airport shuttle van to come get us at 3:45 so we can check in on time to catch our 6am flight to Detroit or Chicago or someplace Mid-Western that will connect to a flight back to Osaka. This was always accompanied by a deep, resounding dread in the pit of my stomach that would begin at least a week before our departure and always result in tears sometime before, and usually while, I hugged and kissed my Mom good bye as she stood in her white bathrobe, haloed in her front doorway in the darkest, deepest part of night, sending the three of us off on our journey to the other side of the world.
Well, this time it's different. I'm not going anywhere.