Living underground was strange. You don't realize how much you keep track of the time of day, or weather, when there is no window (I remember back in my early working days, where the "status offices" had windows and the rest of us had interior offices.) And it didn't help that our bodies were on East coast time.
But there were things that we knew we wanted to see - like sunrises and sunsets. I'm just not used to checking the time to see when it's happening. But we did, and we'd pop upstairs (got a lot of exercise this trip) to watch it sink below the horizon, with the incredible colors in the clear desert air. Same with the sunrise - fortunately, being on East coast time we woke up early enough on the second day. Mike wondered when the sunrise would be - rather than looking out a non-existent window, I had to Google it - and the answer was "now!" So the jacket got put on over the pajamas and another run up the stairs. And, again, it was spectacular.
Less spectacular was the other thing that I had been looking forward to: the wonderful display of stars in the desert sky, far from any light pollution. But I had not figured on there being not only a full moon, but a super moon. As Mike observed - you could practically read a book out there. With that huge spotlight in the sky, no stars were visible.
Our other childhood memory was that of the desert dust. Not sand, but dust. We remembered the dust storms (sometimes school would even be canceled). The dust was as soft and fine as talcum powder. When a storm was coming, we would take a dinner knife and paper towels to wedge into the crack of the door opening. We both remembered the time that I accidentally left my bedroom window open about a quarter of an inch, and ended up with a sand dune in my bedroom, with poor little Squeaky having become a brown rat rather than a white one.
As we wandered around the compound, we did indeed find the windblown drifts of that talcum-fine dust. Mike scooped up a baggie of it to take home (his plan is to find an hourglass to put it in - we'll see.
There's an impression, a feeling, that I've been trying to analyze, something odd about this trip (granted, the whole thing was a little strange). It was odd, going back to someplace I used to live. But more than that; it was remembering that somehow, once upon a time, I had a life without Bob. We met shortly after I turned 19; he was part of me for my entire adult life. So in every adult memory that I have, he was there somewhere. But there had been a time in my life without him; I had simply forgotten about it. Very briefly, on this trip, I was for the first time in almost five years, simply Ann, not Ann-without-Bob.
Bob would have loved the bunker - he always wanted one. When we would watch the TV shows about people living in weird places, the bunkers and converted silos were his favorites. But I also have to admit that he would have had a problem with all those stairs. He messed up his knee in high school, and damaged the same leg in an accident during military training. He'd had a few surgeries for bone spurs. Between his legs going out randomly on him, and his size, we just got used to doing automatic compensation; there were simply things we couldn't do.
When we were still newlyweds and went for his training in El Paso, we went to an event where different organizations had been set up. We were talking with the hang-gliding group. It really sounded like fun - but they didn't have a harness his size, and the glider was only rated for 200 pounds. He never went zip-lining at the museum for the same reason - no harness would fit (I don't think he minded that much). Same with the tandem skydiving. When we took our backcountry trip to Oaxaca, there were a couple of occasions where we would go exploring on our own when the rest of the group was being taken up paths too steep for him to manage. When we went to Harry Potter World, he couldn't go on the ride at Hogwarts Castle (some of the newer rides had oversized seating, but not this one).
It was just a way of life. And sure, I could have gone on the hikes or the ride, but the idea of the trips was for us to be together - I didn't want to run off and leave him behind because he couldn't make it.
Going down inside the abandoned silo was amazing and terrifying and surreal - one of the most fascinating things I have done in my life. And it's oddly disquieting to think that if Bob had been there, I wouldn't have done it. It would have been too dangerous for him to try, with that tendency of his leg to give out. I'm not certain he could have even fit on those narrow spiral steps. He would have encouraged to to do it (like the skydiving) but it would have underscored that he couldn't - and I wouldn't have done that to him.
There is a scene in the Pied Piper where he is playing and all the children are dancing and following him and they finally all disappear into the big crack of the mountain which then closes, leaving behind only the little crippled boy who couldn't keep up. I remember one time when a group of us were going down a sidewalk, laughing, talking, heading somewhere, and then his voice called out from behind us "Don't let the mountain close without me!" We hadn't noticed that he couldn't keep up.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It's just part of the realization that whatever I do from here on out, I don't have to think about how he'll fit in. It's a lifetime of habit to break. And I miss it.
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