Adrift.

July 3, El Cerrito, California.

I am adrift without the circus. I am lost without the familiar rhythm of the shows. My anchor is gone without the trucks and trailers around me.
The day is winding up, stretching painfully, and Dylan is crying out the melancholy I feel. There's a word in Portuguese, a sodade, that captures that feeling, of longing and sadness and bitter-sweet regret. Tonight I'll miss the sound of the generator shutting off.
We left late this morning. It was a morning of adieus, one by one, the dancers, Alexela, going off to Las vegas to try her luck finally, hugging tio Tito for a long time, they were lovers and came out in the open in the last few days, what the hell it's all over, no need to hide now, Yvonne, Vanessa, Mary Lou, going to work at carnivals across California, Pablo, watching Yvonne go with one hand over his heart and a look of hurt in his eyes hardly concealed by his smile, "Sea hombre, Pablo!" Saul teasing him, Araceli, who worked concessions and is going back home to Veracruz, Mexico, to live with her sisters, it is time, the savings are good enough, Edith, in the office, Jose Ivan's mother, who doesn't know what they'll do yet, the Venezuelans and the Argentinians left last night and Andrea came by too, an endless series of goodbyes, more heart wrenching than we would have ever thought. Estas despedidas son horribles. My husband, like most men I know, doesn't put his feelings into words if he can avoid it; for this he couldn't.
We drove up from Circus Chimera's last stop, in Newark, near San Jose, to El Cerrito, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. Richard is kind enough to let us stay in the parking lot of his office/Playland kingdom. Fridman hooked up the light and water lines and was off in a rush, tio Tito had come to get him in one of the circus' vans, they were waiting for them down in Newark to hit the road back to Texas. He's driving one of the trucks back to the winter quarters in Rio Hondo, on the Mexican border where we started in February, and will be flying back hopefully in no more than a week. They must be on a highway somewhere in Southern California as I write these lines.